Common pitfalls of Azure Automation and how to avoid them
Trying to do everything at once
A common pitfall in Azure Automation is aiming for perfection before anything goes live. Teams try to pack every detail into one big, flawless deployment – only to end up paralysed by complexity. Nothing gets tested, and nothing ships.
The solution:
Approach it iteratively: start small, apply changes gradually, and layer on what you need as you go. Begin with a basic resource group, and add compute, storage, and monitoring later – depending on your workload demands.
Ignoring post-deployment
A common problem for teams is to rush to deploy without thinking past deployment. Everything gets rushed into Azure and called done – but what happens if we need to make a change? Can we all understand it?
Yes, you can write extraordinary Infrastructure as Code (IaC). But what you shouldn’t do is blast infrastructure into Azure with no thought about maintaining it. This is especially common when teams start to migrate to the cloud; where they get stuck in the mindset of “Migrate, migrate, migrate!” – ending up with a fragile infrastructure, which gets too hard to maintain.
The solution:
Again, iteration is your answer. Even when things seem “set in stone,” they must be maintainable. You’ll need to revisit them, change them, and adapt them over time. Cloud environments aren’t one-and-done projects – instead they have to evolve.
Handling security last
Though “security first” is a common saying these days, in practice, it’s often still not the case.
Delaying security and trying to “fix” it in a live production environment is far from ideal. You end up with blind spots, unpredictable changes, broken stuff, followed by chaos.
The solution:
Security needs to start early, in dev and test environments where it’s safe to experiment and rebuild. Use tools like Azure Policy in audit mode to flag issues before they hit production. Focus on least privilege from the start. This doesn’t apply only to users, but also to resources and networks.
Siloing Azure Automation
When only a small group knows how runbooks, schedules, or hybrid workers are set up, it creates a dependency that’s hard to manage. Azure Automation simply shouldn’t be owned by one or a few. If so, other teams end up waiting or, even worse – avoiding automation altogether. Keeping it siloed limits adoption, slows progress, and makes scaling harder than it needs to be.
The solution:
The key is sharing automation knowledge and making it accessible. What you should do:
- Document how things are built
- Share runbook patterns, scripts, and processes across teams
Just don’t treat Azure Automation as a black box. Instead, build shared ownership so more people can maintain and improve it.
Closing thoughts
We’ve discussed how Azure Automation helps you cut down manual work, reduce errors, and build repeatable, reliable processes across Azure and non-Azure environments.
Avoiding common pitfalls like overplanning, ignoring maintenance, or treating security as an afterthought makes a big difference.
You’ll get the most out of Azure Automation by starting small, sharing knowledge, and continuing to iterate.
