Cloud services promise to eliminate unused capacity, but too often fail to offer granular controls that allow customers to turn services on and off at the times they chose.

But things are looking up for users who like to pay for cloud capacity – VMs specifically – by the hour, thanks to script-based command tools that schedule exactly when VMs are turned on and off.

And it’s saving customers big bucks, says Revera solutions architect Stu Holley, who has developed management scripts for clients using Revera’s Azure-enabled cloud Apollo.

“Suppose you want a user acceptance and testing environment turned off every day at 6:30 pm. Now you can,” he says. “We have a client who has slashed VM costs by 65 percent with a simple management script that determines exactly when their UAT environment is available.”

A sequence of instructions carried out by another programme, management scripts register a scheduled task to stop a single VM of set of VMs at specified times.

The combination of granular control and automation is helping cloud service providers to counter the perception that their platforms don’t work in concert with the services their customers use in the cloud.

“We don’t leave the lights on at the office overnight. The same thinking applies to cloud capacity – switch it off when you’ve finished using it,” says Holley.

Contact Revera’s Stu Holley on stu.holley@revera.co.nz to schedule Apollo VMs.