How Can I Schedule My Azure VM to Run Only 8 Hours a Day?

You might want to check out Azure's Automation features. There's a way to set up automatic start and shutdown for your VMs, so they only run during your specified hours. This can really help you automate the process and ensure you don’t forget.

To keep costs down, you'll want to make sure to deallocate the VM when it's not in use. Just stopping it isn’t enough because you still get charged for the compute resources. Deallocating it completely will help reduce those costs during off-hours.

If you're looking for more savings, consider using a savings plan instead of a reserved instance. This can give you discounts based on your usage without the long-term commitment.

Just a heads up, deallocating a VM does come with some risks; if there are no resources available when you try to start it again, you might face delays or issues. It's safer for non-critical workloads.

Using Azure's automated tasks under the VM's settings is also a great option. You can schedule tasks for starting and stopping your VM to save yourself from having to remember to do it manually every day.