Report Azure resource usage with PowerShell

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Baki Onur Okutucu

Onur is a DevOps Engineer and Subject Matter Expert for Azure, and PowerShell. He is the founder of Clouderz Ltd, a cloud consultancy based in London. For 15 years in a row, Microsoft has recognized him as an MVP (Most Valuable Professional). You can follow Onur on Twitter: @BakiOnur.

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Defining Azure resources

Even though you've set your Azure resource limits to high values, it might still be critical to create consumption reports regularly. This is especially true for organizations that frequently create large numbers of resources in a dynamic way.

First, I'd like to list my current resources in a particular subscription:

Get-AzureRmResource | select name

This command shows us all resources in a subscription. However, this does not give us a complete report of all resource types and usage details.

Displaying all resources in a particular subscription

In case we need to see how many virtual machines (VMs) are already in use, we can execute this command:

(get-azurermvm).count

Total number of Azure Resource Manager (Azure RM) VMs

However, this command does not give us the maximum number of allowed VMs. You can view the limit for each resource available in Azure. But this is a huge list showing each resource with details for limits and quotas. The Azure PowerShell Module version 4.1.0 (or later) has the ability to list all resources with corresponding limit values.

Resource usage reports

Three cmdlets allow us to get a usage report for a particular Azure location. This point is important because each Azure location has its own separate limits, which may differ from one location to another. This is why we need to specify a value for the -Location parameter.

$location="WestEurope"
Get-AzureRmVMUsage -Location $location

Current usage of Azure RM VMs in a specific Azure location

Get-AzureRmStorageUsage | select name,currentvalue,limit

Current usage of Azure RM storage accounts, location independent

Get-AzureRmNetworkUsage -Location $location | select resourcetype,currentvalue,limit

Current usage of Azure RM network resources in a specific Azure location

Combining reports

Now we should combine all three of the cmdlets above using custom formatting. We need to make sure the output for each cmdlet has the same column structure so we can have a single table showing all results in it. To achieve this, we'll get them aligned in a single view by giving columns identical names.

The column names are Name, CurrentValue, and Limit:

$location="westeurope"
$vms=Get-AzureRmVMUsage -Location $location | select @{label="Name";expression={$_.name.LocalizedValue}},currentvalue,limit
$storages=Get-AzureRmStorageUsage | select name,currentvalue,limit
$networks=Get-AzureRmNetworkUsage -Location $location | select @{label="Name";expression={$_.resourcetype}},currentvalue,limit
$result=$vms+$storages+$networks
$result

Now we are able to see all the results in a single table:

Combination of VM, storage, and network resource usage reports

With the help of the Out-Gridview cmdlet, we can display the output in an interactive table:

$result | Out-gridview

Grid view of the consumption report

By doing this, we've created a complete table listing all details we need in terms of resource limits and consumptions.

Reporting usage limits

Let's take this one step further by adding a usage check feature. For instance, you may want to get notified in case you start running out of VMs before you hit the limit. Even though Azure limits are not that restricted, we can make sure we have a sufficient amount of resources to use before it's too late. It makes sense to send a notification when 80 percent of a certain resource has been consumed. The script below checks the values and sends you a daily report with resource details using the Send-MailMessage cmdlet.

The code below will do the trick. Note: I've set the limit to 4% to be able to test it. You can change it to any value you like.

cls
$location="westeurope"
$vms=Get-AzureRmVMUsage -Location $location | select @{label="Name";expression={$_.name.LocalizedValue}},currentvalue,limit,@{label="PercentageUsed";expression={[math]::Round(($_.currentvalue/$_.limit)*100,1)}}
$storages=Get-AzureRmStorageUsage | select name,currentvalue,limit,@{label="PercentageUsed";expression={[math]::Round(($_.currentvalue/$_.limit)*100,1)}}
$networks=Get-AzureRmNetworkUsage -Location $location | select @{label="Name";expression={$_.resourcetype}},currentvalue,limit,@{label="PercentageUsed";expression={[math]::Round(($_.currentvalue/$_.limit)*100,1)}}
$result=$vms+$storages+$networks
$warning=@()
foreach($resource in $result){
	if($resource.percentageused -gt 4){
		$Warning+=$resource
	}
}

$body=$warning | convertto-html
$bodyhtml=@"
<P>
-------------------------------------------
The resources that are about to hit their warning levels
-------------------------------------------
<P>
$body
"@

if($warning.count -gt 0){
	Send-MailMessage -BodyAsHtml -body $bodyhtml -Subject "Azure Resource Consumption Report" -SmtpServer smtp.office365.com -UseSsl -From onur.okutucu@clouderz.com -to onur.okutucu@clouderz.com -Credential (get-credential) -Port 587
}

The script sends you a consumption report showing the resources that are hitting their limits.

An automatic Azure resource consumption report in your mailbox