Written by Albert Friedman
on 

Automating Cloud Ops Toil with Azure Copilot: Four Workflows You Can Ship This Week

Reducing operational toil is about eliminating the repetitive, low‑value tasks that keep engineers busy and burn out on‑call teams. The last 12 months have brought a wave of practical, console‑integrated AI features that make a dent in day‑to‑day ops work. In particular, Microsoft made Copilot in Azure generally available on April 8, 2025, with new skills aimed squarely at operations: authoring infrastructure as code, diagnosing AKS clusters, and even helping with cost management right from the Azure portal. We’ll focus on shipping useful workflows with Azure Copilot, and we’ll also note similar trends from Google Cloud’s Gemini Cloud Assist and PagerDuty so you can see where the industry is heading. (techcommunity.microsoft.com)

Below are four production‑oriented workflows you can implement this week to reduce toil without deep re‑engineering.

What Azure Copilot can automate today (at a glance)

For context, Google Cloud’s Gemini Cloud Assist offers similar console‑embedded assistance for design, troubleshooting (Investigations), IaC generation, and cost optimization—and it recently integrated real‑time service health into incident workflows. PagerDuty, on the incident side, is pushing AI‑generated runbooks and “automation on alerts” to fix issues before tickets even open. The trend is clear: fewer clicks, fewer handoffs, faster mean time to resolution. (cloud.google.com)

Workflow 1: Turn a request into a Terraform PR in minutes

Ideal for: platform/infra teams who get frequent “please create X in Y region” requests.

1) Capture the intent in plain English
In the Azure portal, open Copilot and describe the target infrastructure as a small set of resources. Tip: keep it under ~8 primary resource types for the best initial draft; you can iterate. (learn.microsoft.com)

Example prompt:

2) Review the generated configuration
Copilot returns a deployable Terraform skeleton (main resources plus dependencies). Copy it to your repo, run terraform fmt/validate, and wire it into your existing plan/apply flow (e.g., GitHub Actions). (learn.microsoft.com)

3) Iterate with intent, not syntax
Ask Copilot to “add an Azure Storage account for boot diagnostics” or “switch to Ubuntu 22.04.” It will update the config and call out diffs. (learn.microsoft.com)

4) Open a PR and let the pipeline do the rest
Your PR triggers your usual security and policy checks (OPA/Conftest, tfsec, cost estimation). You’ve gone from ticket to PR without hand‑writing boilerplate.

Example Terraform snippet (starter skeleton you can refine):

provider "azurerm" {
  features {}
}

resource "azurerm_resource_group" "rg" {
  name     = "rg-dev-eastus"
  location = "East US"
  tags = { env = "dev", costCenter = "apps" }
}

resource "azurerm_virtual_network" "vnet" {
  name                = "vnet-dev-eastus"
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.rg.location
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.rg.name
  address_space       = ["10.20.0.0/16"]
}

resource "azurerm_subnet" "subnet" {
  name                 = "subnet-apps"
  resource_group_name  = azurerm_resource_group.rg.name
  virtual_network_name = azurerm_virtual_network.vnet.name
  address_prefixes     = ["10.20.1.0/24"]
}

resource "azurerm_network_security_group" "nsg" {
  name                = "nsg-dev-ssh"
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.rg.location
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.rg.name
  security_rule {
    name                       = "SSHIn"
    priority                   = 100
    direction                  = "Inbound"
    access                     = "Allow"
    protocol                   = "Tcp"
    source_port_range          = "*"
    destination_port_range     = "22"
    source_address_prefixes    = ["YOUR.IP.ADDR.ONLY/32"]
    destination_address_prefix = "*"
  }
}

Why this reduces toil

Workflow 2: On‑call triage for AKS—fewer tabs, faster fixes

Ideal for: SREs and platform teams responsible for AKS.

1) Start from the cluster page and ask in plain English
Copilot is context‑aware. If you’re on an AKS cluster blade, it can scope to that cluster automatically. Common asks: list failed pods across namespaces, check rollout status, or scale a deployment. Copilot shows the kubectl it intends to run and asks you to confirm before execution. (learn.microsoft.com)

Example prompts:

2) Let built‑in detectors do the heavy lifting
For issues like OOMKilled pods, node pressure, or networking/DNS misconfigurations, Copilot can invoke detectors and summarize likely causes and remediations, with links to details. It’s a faster path to the “first useful clue.” (learn.microsoft.com)

3) Deploy diagnostics without hunting docs
Ask Copilot to deploy Periscope for log gathering or CanIPull to validate registry access from a specific node. It will guide you through selection and execution. (learn.microsoft.com)

4) Generate or fix Kubernetes YAML in‑place
Open the AKS YAML editor, press ALT+I for inline Copilot, and say “add pod anti‑affinity and liveness/readiness probes to this deployment.” Copilot proposes changes with a diff you can accept or discard. (learn.microsoft.com)

Why this reduces toil

Workflow 3: Quick cost checks and savings actions from the console

Ideal for: teams practicing lightweight FinOps without adding a new tool.

1) Ask for a summary, then drill down
Prompts like “Summarize my last 6 months of cost and show the top drivers” produce a digest with a link straight into Cost analysis for deeper views. (learn.microsoft.com)

2) Forecast or simulate changes
You can ask “Forecast the next 3 months” or, for token‑metered services, “What happens if usage increases by 15%?” Copilot returns estimates you can validate against Cost analysis. (learn.microsoft.com)

3) Act on savings recommendations
Ask “How can we reduce our costs?” Copilot surfaces guidance (e.g., right‑size VMs, clean up idle disks) and links to the relevant blades so you can execute. Microsoft highlights Copilot’s GA availability in cost workflows, with built‑in “nudges” to help people get started. (azure.microsoft.com)

Starter prompts:

Workflow 4: Close the loop with automation runbooks

Your incident tooling should be able to execute the fixes Copilot suggests—without waiting for a human for routine cases.

How to tie things together:

Safety, permissions, and governance

30‑day rollout plan (lightweight)

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

What to measure

Copy‑paste starter prompts

Infrastructure (portal or VS Code):

AKS triage:

Cost:

Where this is headed

The big picture is that console‑embedded assistants are becoming standard parts of cloud operations. Gemini Cloud Assist now integrates real‑time service health into incident response (“Is it Google or is it me?”), and exposes Investigations and IaC generation in the console. PagerDuty is wiring automation directly into alert processing. Azure Copilot’s GA puts similar capabilities in reach for most teams running on Azure. If you start with the workflows above, you’ll cut the repetitive glue work while keeping humans in control of change. (cloud.google.com)

If you want a vendor‑agnostic takeaway: begin where the toil is loudest (IaC scaffolding, AKS triage, cost reviews), constrain the scope, automate the known fixes, and measure the time you get back. Then iterate.