🪣 QuotaGrabber

Incrementally grab Azure VM-family quota — one safe chunk at a time.

When Azure says “no” to +1000 vCPUs, QuotaGrabber says “sure, how about +50… and +50… and +50…”

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✨ What is this?

An interactive script that incrementally requests Azure VM-family quota increases in small chunks. Built for cases where Azure rejects single large jumps (e.g. +1000 vCPUs) and someone has been chunking the requests by hand through the portal.

Two equivalent implementations are provided — pick your favorite:

	Implementation	Best for
🟦	PowerShell — Invoke-QuotaGrabber.ps1	Windows, no runtime beyond az
🐍	Python — quota_grabber.py	Cross-platform, Python 3.8+, no pip installs

Same prompts. Same API calls. Same behavior. Same progress bar. 💯

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📸 What it looks like

Subscription  ▸  Production - Contoso  (xxxxxxxx-....)
Region        ▸  East US  (eastus)
VM family     ▸  Standard DSv3 Family  (current 100/100)
Target        ▸  600
Chunk         ▸  50 every 5 min   →  ~10 requests

Plan: 100 -> 600 in steps of 50 every 5 min, ~10 requests.  Proceed? [y/N] y

[########################................]  60%   start=100  current=400  target=600  step#6  chunk=50

Press Ctrl+C any time to stop. The last printed current value is the live limit at that moment.

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🚦 How it works

flowchart TD
    A([Start]) --> B[Pick subscription]
    B --> C[Pick region]
    C --> D[Pick VM family<br/>shows live current/limit]
    D --> E[Enter target + chunk + interval]
    E --> F{Confirm plan?}
    F -- no --> Z([Abort — nothing sent])
    F -- yes --> G[PUT quota += chunk]
    G --> H[Poll quotaRequest<br/>until terminal state]
    H --> I[Canonical GET<br/>read live limit]
    I --> J{current >= target?}
    J -- no --> K[Sleep interval] --> G
    J -- yes --> Y([Done ✅])
    H -.->|Failed: ContactSupport| X([Stop — open support ticket])

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✅ Requirements

• Azure CLI (az) on PATH — verify with az --version
• Logged in (az login) — both scripts will log you in if needed
• Permissions to submit quota requests (Contributor or Quota Request Operator)
• PowerShell 5.1+ / 7+ or Python 3.8+

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🚀 Quick start

PowerShell

cd C:\temp\internal\QuotaGrabber
./Invoke-QuotaGrabber.ps1

Python

# Windows
cd C:\temp\internal\QuotaGrabber
python .\quota_grabber.py

# macOS / Linux
cd /path/to/QuotaGrabber
python3 ./quota_grabber.py

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🧭 Prompt walkthrough

1. Subscription – pick from every subscription az can see. Type a number, or any substring to filter (name or ID).
2. Region – physical Azure regions only (no logical/edge). Filter by display name (East US) or short name (eastus).
3. VM family – calls az vm list-usage for the region and shows only entries ending in Family. Each row shows (current X/Y) so you see live usage and live limit while selecting. Filter by display name or family code.
4. Target NEW quota limit – must be greater than the current limit.
5. Chunk size per request – default 50. Each iteration asks Azure to raise the limit by this many units (capped at the target).
6. Minutes between requests – default 5.
7. Confirmation – plan summary + y/N. Anything but y/yes aborts before any request is sent.

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⚙️ What each iteration does

1. PUT …/Microsoft.Quota/quotas/{familyCode}?api-version=2023-02-01 with body { properties: { limit: { limitObjectType: LimitValue, value: N }, name: { value: familyCode }, resourceType: standard } }.
2. Read the quotaRequest id from the 202 response and poll Microsoft.Quota/quotaRequests/{id} until provisioningState reaches Succeeded / Failed / Canceled (or 5-min timeout).
3. Re-read the canonical Microsoft.Quota/quotas/{family} GET (with brief retry to clear eventual-consistency flicker) as the source of truth.
4. Update the progress bar.
5. Sleep the interval, then repeat until current >= target or Ctrl+C.

🛟 Failure handling

• Failed + ContactSupport → the script stops immediately. Azure's self-service path rejected the request; further attempts just rack up identical rejections. Open a Microsoft Support ticket (Quota → Compute).
• Failed (other reason) → continues, but trusts the post-step canonical read. If the limit didn't advance you get a red WARNING and a shortened sleep before retry.
• Async poll timeout (rare) → keeps going; the next canonical read decides.

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🛡️ Behavior & guardrails

• Always trusts the live az vm list-usage reading after each request.
• A non-zero exit from a single az rest call is logged, not fatal — many quota workflows return informational output while queued.
• The target ceiling is honored: the last chunk is trimmed so we never overshoot.
• Starting, current, and target limits are all printed at the end for a clean record.

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🔌 Underlying API

Provider	Microsoft.Quota
Api-version	2023-02-01
Resource name	VM-family code from az vm list-usage

Examples: standardDSv3Family, standardNCADSA100v4Family, standardEv5Family. Family codes are taken verbatim from the name.value field so you don't need to hand-translate display names.

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💡 Tips for the 1K+ scenario

• If Azure rejects 1000-unit jumps but accepts smaller ones, start with chunk 50 / interval 5 min. If several go through cleanly, re-run with chunk 100 to halve wall-clock time.

• For families that go to manual review, 15–30 min intervals reduce duplicate pending tickets. The script is safe to Ctrl+C and resume — re-running picks up the new live limit and continues.

• Want a full log?

  # PowerShell
  Start-Transcript C:\temp\internal\QuotaGrabber\run-$(Get-Date -f yyyyMMdd-HHmm).log
  ./Invoke-QuotaGrabber.ps1
  Stop-Transcript

  # Python
  python .\quota_grabber.py *>&1 | Tee-Object -FilePath ".\run-$(Get-Date -f yyyyMMdd-HHmm).log"

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🩺 Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause / fix
az login prompt appears	Expected on first run if you weren't logged in.
"No VM-family quotas returned"	Region typo or no quota visible — check az vm list-usage -l <region>.
AuthorizationFailed from az rest	Caller lacks quota permission on the subscription.
Limit not advancing	Request is in manual review — script keeps polling until Ctrl+C; check the portal "Quota requests" view.
Family doesn't appear	Run az vm list-usage -l <region> -o table and confirm the family is returned for that region.

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Built for real-world Azure quota grinding. 🪣 Safe to interrupt · Safe to resume · No overshoot