az-scout 2026.3.1

Azure SKU scout — explore availability zones, capacity, pricing, and plan VM deployments across subscriptions

Azure Scout: az-scout

Scout Azure regions for VM availability, zone mappings, pricing, spot scores, and quota — then plan deployments with confidence.

az-scout helps you compare how Azure maps logical Availability Zones to physical zones across subscriptions, evaluate SKU capacity and pricing, and generate deterministic deployment plans — all from a single web UI or MCP-powered AI agent.

Features

• Logical-to-physical zone mapping – visualise how Azure maps logical Availability Zones to physical zones across subscriptions in a region.
• SKU availability view – VM SKU availability per physical zone with vCPU quota usage, numeric filters, and CSV export.
• Spot Placement Scores – per-SKU Spot VM allocation likelihood (High / Medium / Low) from the Azure Compute RP.
• Deployment Confidence Score – composite 0–100 score per SKU estimating deployment success, synthesised from quota, spot scores, zone breadth, restrictions, and price pressure.
• Deployment Plan – deterministic POST /api/deployment-plan endpoint returning ranked plans with business and technical views (no LLM).
• AI Chat Assistant (optional) – chat panel powered by Azure OpenAI with streaming, tool calling, and markdown rendering. Requires Azure OpenAI environment variables.
• MCP server – expose all capabilities as MCP tools for AI agents.
• Plugin system – extend az-scout with pip-installable plugins (API routes, MCP tools, UI tabs, chat modes). See Known plugins below.

Quick start

Prerequisites

Requirement	Details
Python	≥ 3.11
Azure credentials	Any method supported by DefaultAzureCredential (az login, managed identity, …)
RBAC	Reader on the subscriptions you want to query, Virtual Machine Contributor on the subscriptions for Spot Placement Scores retrieval
Azure OpenAI (optional)	For the AI Chat Assistant: set AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT, AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY, AZURE_OPENAI_DEPLOYMENT, and optionally AZURE_OPENAI_API_VERSION

Run locally with uv tool (recommended)

# Make sure you are authenticated to Azure
az login

# Run the tool (no install required)
uvx az-scout

Your browser opens automatically at http://127.0.0.1:5001.

Known plugins

az-scout can be extended with pip-installable plugins discovered automatically at startup. See docs/plugins.md for the plugin development guide and the scaffold for a ready-to-use template.

Plugin	Description
az-scout-plugin-strategy-advisor	Multi-region capacity strategy recommendation engine — evaluates regions, quotas, spot scores, pricing, and latency to recommend deployment strategies
az-scout-plugin-batch-sku	Azure Batch SKU availability — discover and compare Batch-supported VM SKUs per region
az-scout-plugin-latency-stats	Inter-region latency statistics — D3.js graph visualisation of pairwise RTT between Azure regions

Install a plugin:

uv pip install <plugin-package-name>

Installation options

Recommended: install with uv

uv install az-scout
uvx az-scout

Alternative: install with pip

pip install az-scout
az-scout

Docker

docker run --rm -p 8000:8000 \
  -e AZURE_TENANT_ID=<your-tenant> \
  -e AZURE_CLIENT_ID=<your-sp-client-id> \
  -e AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET=<your-sp-secret> \
  ghcr.io/lrivallain/az-scout:latest

Dev Container

A Dev Container configuration is included for a one-click development environment. Requires Docker and VS Code with the Dev Containers extension.

Open the repo in VS Code → Reopen in Container → run uv run az-scout web --host 0.0.0.0 --port 5001 --reload --no-open -v.

Azure Container App

It is also possible to deploy az-scout as a web app in Azure using the provided Bicep template (see Deploy to Azure section below).

Note: The web UI is designed for local use and may not be suitable for public-facing deployment without additional security measures (authentication, network restrictions, etc.). The MCP server can be exposed over the public internet if needed, but ensure you have proper authentication and authorization in place to protect access to Azure data.

UI guided deployment

A Bicep template is provided to deploy az-scout as an Azure Container App with a managed identity. You can use the Deploy to Azure button above for a portal-guided experience, or use the CLI commands below.

Bicep deploy from CLI

# Create a resource group
az group create -n rg-az-scout -l <your-region>

# Deploy (replace subscription IDs with your own)
az deployment group create \
  -g rg-az-scout \
  -f deploy/main.bicep \
  -p readerSubscriptionIds='["SUB_ID_1","SUB_ID_2"]'

See deploy/main.example.bicepparam for all available parameters.

Resources created

The deployment creates:

Resource	Purpose
Container App	Runs ghcr.io/lrivallain/az-scout
Managed Identity	Reader role on target subscriptions
VM Contributor	Virtual Machine Contributor role for Spot Placement Scores (enabled by default)
Log Analytics	Container logs and diagnostics
Container Apps Env	Hosting environment

Note: The Virtual Machine Contributor role is required for querying Spot Placement Scores (POST endpoint). Set enableSpotScoreRole=false to skip this if you don't need spot scores or prefer to manage permissions manually.

Enable Entra ID authentication (EasyAuth)

The included setup script automates App Registration creation and is safe to re-run (idempotent). It works in two phases — before and after deployment:

# Phase 1: create App Registration + secret (before deploying)
./deploy/setup-easyauth.sh --enable-mcp

# Deploy with the output Client ID + Secret
az deployment group create -g rg-az-scout -f deploy/main.bicep \
  -p enableAuth=true -p authClientId='<id>' -p authClientSecret='<secret>' ...

# Phase 2: add redirect URIs (auto-detected from resource group)
./deploy/setup-easyauth.sh --resource-group rg-az-scout --enable-mcp --enable-vscode

For a complete manual walkthrough, troubleshooting, and MCP client configuration, see deploy/EASYAUTH.md.

Usage

CLI options

az-scout [COMMAND] [OPTIONS]

az-scout --help.     # show global help
az-scout web --help  # show web subcommand help
az-scout mcp --help  # show mcp subcommand help
az-scout --version   # show version

az-scout web (default)

Run the web UI. This is the default when no subcommand is given.

  --host TEXT     Host to bind to.  [default: 127.0.0.1]
  --port INTEGER  Port to listen on.  [default: 5001]
  --no-open       Don't open the browser automatically.
  -v, --verbose   Enable verbose logging.
  --reload        Auto-reload on code changes (development only).
  --help          Show this message and exit.

az-scout mcp

Run the MCP server.

  --http          Use Streamable HTTP transport instead of stdio.
  --port INTEGER  Port for Streamable HTTP transport.  [default: 8080]
  -v, --verbose   Enable verbose logging.
  --help          Show this message and exit.

MCP server

An MCP server is included, allowing AI agents (Claude Desktop, VS Code Copilot, etc.) to query zone mappings and SKU availability directly.

Available tools

Tool	Description
list_tenants	Discover Azure AD tenants and authentication status
list_subscriptions	List enabled subscriptions (optionally scoped to a tenant)
list_regions	List regions that support Availability Zones
get_zone_mappings	Get logical→physical zone mappings for subscriptions in a region
get_sku_availability	Get VM SKU availability per zone with restrictions, capabilities, and vCPU quota per family
get_spot_scores	Get Spot Placement Scores (High / Medium / Low) for a list of VM sizes in a region
get_sku_pricing_detail	Get detailed Linux pricing (PayGo, Spot, RI 1Y/3Y, SP 1Y/3Y) and VM profile for a single SKU

Plugin tools: Plugins can register additional MCP tools. For example, the Strategy Advisor plugin adds a capacity_strategy tool.

get_sku_availability supports optional filters to reduce output size: name, family, min_vcpus, max_vcpus, min_memory_gb, max_memory_gb.

stdio transport (default – for Claude Desktop, VS Code, etc.)

az-scout mcp

Add to your MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "az-scout": {
      "command": "az-scout",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

If using uv:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "az-scout": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["az-scout", "mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Streamable HTTP transport

When running in web mode, the MCP server is automatically available at /mcp for integration with web-based clients or when running as a hosted deployment (Container App, etc.).

For MCP-only use with Streamable HTTP transport, run:

az-scout mcp --http --port 8082

Add to your MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "az-scout": {
      "url": "http://localhost:8082/mcp" // or "https://<your-app-url>/mcp" for web command
    }
  }
}

Hosted deployment: When running as a Container App (or any hosted web server), the MCP endpoint is automatically available at /mcp alongside the web UI — no separate server needed. Point your MCP client to https://<your-app-url>/mcp.

EasyAuth: If your Container App has EasyAuth enabled, MCP clients must pass a bearer token in the Authorization header. See the EasyAuth guide for detailed instructions.

API

API documentation is available at /docs (Swagger UI) and /redoc (ReDoc) when the server is running.

Under the hood

The backend calls the Azure Resource Manager REST API to fetch:

• Zone mappings: availabilityZoneMappings from /subscriptions/{id}/locations endpoint
• Resource SKUs: SKU details from /subscriptions/{id}/providers/Microsoft.Compute/skus endpoint with zone restrictions and capabilities
• Compute Usages: vCPU quota per VM family from /subscriptions/{id}/providers/Microsoft.Compute/locations/{region}/usages endpoint (cached for 10 minutes, with retry on throttling and graceful handling of 403)
• Spot Placement Scores: likelihood indicators for Spot VM allocation from /subscriptions/{id}/providers/Microsoft.Compute/locations/{region}/placementScores/spot/generate endpoint (batched in chunks of 100, sequential execution with retry/back-off, cached for 10 minutes). Note: these scores reflect the probability of obtaining a Spot VM allocation, not datacenter capacity.

License

MIT

Disclaimer

This tool is not affiliated with Microsoft. All capacity, pricing, and latency information are indicative and not a guarantee of deployment success. Spot placement scores are probabilistic. Quota values and pricing are dynamic and may change between planning and actual deployment. Latency values are based on Microsoft published statistics and must be validated with in-tenant measurements.