You manage two pooled host pools: one for production and one for project-based contractors. You need to minimize compute cost by powering down idle session hosts after hours and allow the first user who connects in the morning to start deallocated VMs automatically. What should you configure?

The correct answer is to configure an Azure Virtual Desktop scaling plan and enable Start VM on connect. A scaling plan allows you to define schedules to automatically power down and deallocate VMs during off-peak hours, minimizing compute costs. Enabling "Start VM on connect" on the host pool ensures that when the first user attempts to connect to a deallocated VM, Azure Virtual Desktop automatically starts it, providing a seamless experience. Incorrect options: Enabling auto-shutdown on each VM and disabling autoscale would stop VMs but wouldn't automatically start them upon user connection, leading to a poor user experience. Using autoscale to stop VMs but keeping them allocated would incur compute costs even when idle, defeating the purpose of cost optimization. The Azure Automation Start/Stop VM solution is a broader VM management tool, but AVD's native scaling plan is specifically designed for optimizing AVD host pools and integrates seamlessly with "Start VM on connect." Configuring Group Policy to hibernate the guest OS is not an Azure-native solution for managing VM lifecycle and would not deallocate the VM, thus not saving compute costs.