---
title: "Spring Cleaning: Optimizing Google Cloud VMs and GCVE in 2025"
date: "2025-05-05T00:00:00Z"
tags: ["Optimization", "Cost", "Autoscaler"]
categories: ["Google Cloud", "FinOps"]
---


It's May, the sun is shining, and your cloud bill is probably higher than it needs to be. With the upcoming licensing changes later this year, now is the perfect time to audit your environment.

## Identify Zombie VMs

In the native Compute Engine world, we look for VMs with <5% CPU utilization. In GCVE, it's slightly different. You are paying for the *host*, not the individual VM. However, cleaning up zombie VMs allows you to consolidate workloads and potentially power down a node.

![Cloud Monitoring Metrics for CPU Utilization][1]

## Use the Autoscaler

If you haven't configured the **Autoscaler** policies in GCVE yet, do it now.
* **Scale out:** When CPU/RAM hits 80%.
* **Scale in:** When it drops below 40%.

Don't let expensive `ve2` nodes sit idle over the weekend if your developers aren't working!

## Summary

A little hygiene goes a long way. Use Cloud Monitoring to find the waste, consolidate your clusters, and get ready for the BYOL era with a lean footprint.

[1]: /images/uploads/2025/05/gcve-autoscaler-policy.webp

[100]: https://medium.com/google-cloud/optimize-google-cloud-vms-in-2025-cut-costs-keep-performance-c2f73c925a62 'Optimize Google Cloud VMs in 2025'