Automating quota management with Azure Quota REST API

Enterprises are increasingly defined by the applications they use and build to run their core business processes, including the customer experiences they provide. Across all sectors, we see how companies like challenger banks, online healthcare providers, e-commerce providers, and other startups are winning customers by providing new applications. The continuous need to innovate and deliver faster has yielded a new paradigm of software development called cloud native.

Cloud native describes the applications, architectures, platforms, infrastructure, and processes, that together make it economical and possible to respond quickly to a changing landscape and growing customer needs. In simple terms, it is application code, and dependencies packaged in containers, deployed as microservices, and exposed as APIs. And you can manage them using DevOps processes and tools.

Automation is a key aspect of DevOps and agile development. The longer it takes for developers and operations personnel to complete mechanical and manual tasks, the slower and less flexible their environment becomes. With Azure Quota REST API, you can automate quota management and integrate this capability programmatically with your applications, tools, and existing systems. Now you can move your applications and systems faster to the cloud and free up your time to focus on your core business.

On January 19, we announced the general availability of the Azure Quota API. In this blog post, we walk you through the benefits of using the Azure Quota API to automate and improve your Azure resource management operations.

What are quotas?

Quotas, also referred to as service limits, are the maximum values for the resources, actions, and items in an Azure account.

An Azure subscription is an agreement between a customer and Microsoft that enables the customer to obtain Azure services. The subscription pricing and related terms are governed by the offer chosen for the subscription. There is a default quota for a given subscription, region, and stock-keeping unit (SKU). Each Azure service defines its quotas and default values.

Here are some things to consider about quotas:

◉ Just like credit cards have credit limits, Azure services have limits. A quota is the upper limit of consumption for an Azure resource.

◉ A quota is shared across all the services in each subscription. When you are evaluating your capacity needs, you should calculate usage across all services.

◉ Some services have adjustable limits. The limit can be raised above the default limit but not above the maximum limit. Default limits vary by offer category type, such as free trial, pay-as-you-go, and virtual machine series (such as Dv4, Fsv2, and Easv4).

Key benefits

Customers with a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, pay-as-you-go subscription, or Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) benefit from using Azure Quota API to improve their Azure resource management operations. Here are some customer benefits for using Azure Quota API:

◉ Granular and programmatic control for managing quotas that need to be adjusted.

◉ Managing transitional events when quota checks fail without resulting in creating a support ticket for a quota increase.

◉ Automating quota usage validation end-to-end and requesting quota increases with the Azure Quota API.

◉ Managing organic and inorganic growth of virtual machines efficiently.

Using Azure Quota API

To compete effectively, enterprises need to create an environment where developers can do their best work and operation teams can confidently meet the reliability, security, and compliance requirements their organizations expect. This requires advanced cloud capabilities designed to support modern constructs like containers, DevOps, APIs, managed services, and the fluidity to work across environments and teams. Azure Quota API can address this need for quota management automation and enabling quota management integration with your existing tools and applications.

Azure Quota API is a one-stop-shop for automating the process of viewing and managing quotas and eliminating the manual process of creating and managing quotas through support tickets in the Azure portal. Azure Quota API makes it easy to look up current quota usage and to request increases. With the current version of Azure Quota API, you can manage the service limits (quota) of Azure Virtual Machines (cores/vCPU) and Azure Machine Learning. In future releases, you will be able to take advantage of this capability to query current usage and quotas for additional Azure services and resources.

The following example illustrates how to use the Azure Quota API to automate quota management to improve agility, developer velocity, and efficiency in IT operations.

If you are a lead developer in a cloud readiness team, you may need to test software for a variety of configurations at scale. While testing, you may need to create many virtual machines. One of the challenges you may face is the inability to deploy new virtual machines because the maximum quota limit has been reached. This may happen frequently and unexpectedly because of the inorganic growth in the usage of virtual machines in your organization.

To continue with your workflow, you would have to manually create a support ticket to request a quota increase. But now, to improve efficiency in your workflow, you can use the Azure Quota API to automate quota request and validation operations end-to-end. You can check usage and monitor when your virtual machines reach the quota limit and automatically submit quota requests to increase limits. This can help you achieve operational efficiencies paving the way for uninterrupted firmware testing.