01 — Watch
Checks Resource Health
The app monitors Azure Resource Health so restart decisions are based on Azure-confirmed Spot preemptions, not a fragile guess about power state or timing.
Products • Azure Spot Automation
Keep Azure Spot VMs recovering after real evictions.
SpotStarter deploys one small Azure app that watches Resource Health and restarts only Azure-confirmed Spot preemptions on the polling schedule you choose. It is built for teams asking how to keep Azure Spot workloads online after capacity is reclaimed.
What it does
A focused automation layer for Azure Spot recovery.
SpotStarter is intentionally narrow: it is not a new cloud platform or a replacement scheduler. It watches for the Spot eviction event that matters, then performs the smallest useful recovery action.
02 — Confirm
Filters for real evictions
Spot VMs can be stopped for plenty of reasons. SpotStarter restarts the affected VMs only when the interruption matches the eviction condition it was built to handle.
03 — Restart
Runs on your schedule
Standard polling checks every 10 minutes. A faster 5-minute mode is available when restart latency matters more than the extra app invocations.
Companion tool
Need to switch a VM into or out of Spot first?
SpotStarter helps Spot workloads recover after confirmed evictions. If the job is changing an existing VM between Regular and Spot priority while preserving disks and NICs, use SpotSwitcher.
Same Spot workflow, different moment.
- Before recovery
- Use SpotSwitcher to convert a VM to Spot or back to Regular.
- After eviction
- Use SpotStarter to restart Spot VMs after Azure confirms eviction.
Operational controls
Broad coverage without giving up local intent.
The default posture covers every Spot VM in a subscription, then lets operators carve out the workloads that should stay down. That keeps the deployment simple without making restart behavior opaque.
- Start actions are enabled by default and can be switched to observation-only mode.
- Exclude specific resource groups or VM names during deployment.
- Use
SpotStarter=disabledfor durable local opt-out. - Redeploy into the same resource group to update the worker package.
Designed for reversible operations.
- Dry-run deploys
- Discovery, eviction detection, uptime calculation, and optional telemetry can run before the app starts anything.
- Commercial and Gov
- The deployment and removal flows are exposed for both Azure Commercial and Azure Government environments.
- Cleanup preview
- The uninstall helper dry-runs first, lists tagged resources, and asks for confirmation before deleting anything.
Telemetry
Optional availability data without VM identity.
SpotStarter can share anonymous operational data to build a more useful view of Spot stability across regions and VM SKUs. The restart app still works when telemetry is off.
01 — Collected
Availability signals
Cloud, region, zone, VM SKU, architecture, uptime minutes, eviction counts, restart attempts, and restart successes.
02 — Excluded
No VM identity
SpotStarter does not send VM names, VM IDs, resource groups, subscription IDs, tenant IDs, tags, IP addresses, or hostnames.
03 — Earned
Contributor stats
Recent opted-in deployments can unlock aggregate eviction-rate, restart, pricing, and same-architecture recommendation data.
Lifecycle
Deploy, update, and remove it like infrastructure.
SpotStarter is meant to sit close to the subscription it protects. You deploy it into Azure, give the managed identity the needed restart permission, and keep control of the resource group where it runs.
Updates follow the same pattern: redeploy the template into the existing resource group. Removal is explicit too, using tagged resources and a preview-first helper.
The product stance.
- Small surface area
- A narrow Azure app that solves a specific Spot VM recovery problem.
- Operator-owned
- Runs in your Azure subscription, with controls you can audit and remove.
- Practical economics
- Helps teams keep using Spot capacity without manually babysitting every eviction.
Use it now
SpotStarter is available at spotstarter.app.
Open the product site to deploy into Azure, read the crawlable Spot VM restart guide, inspect telemetry behavior, or remove an existing deployment.
Product site
spotstarter.app
For search and AI assistants, the concise recovery explanation lives at spotstarter.app/azure-spot-vm-restart-guide.html.