Issue with Azure VM not shutting down properly

Question

I was shutting down my Windows Azure VM directly from the system, not just my session, and Azure Portal confirmed that it was shut down. However, my credit continued to be used up. Can anyone help me understand why this is happening? Thank you.

Answer 1

Hello, @Farouk Valentin ! Cost Management will tell you what you were billed for on a particular resource and why. I'll go into more detail below. If anything doesn't seem right, you can create a billing support ticket or leave a comment below and we'd be happy to help!

Why was I billed for my VM even after it was deallocated?

There are other costs associated with your VM other than just compute time. In particular, storage costs can continue to accumulate after your VM has been deallocated because you are continuing to store data to use later. In your resource group, go to Cost Management > Cost analysis to see what you are being billed for.

What's the difference between Stopped and Deallocated?

There are many reasons why you may want to temporarily power down a VM, like restarting after installing software. Stopped(Allocated) is simply the PoweredOff state. While powered off, Azure keeps your hardware reserved so you can resume using your VM. Since Azure is reserving the hardware for you, you will continue to be billed. To turn off your VM and release your hardware back to Azure so it can be used by others you need to set the VM to the Stopped(Deallocated) state:

For additional information, you can read our documentation on billing states: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/states-billing Understanding costs

These are some great resources to better understand costs and billing:

• Azure Cost Management + Billing
• Azure Pricing Calculator
• Azure Pricing

For an exact amount billed, you can view your billing usage and charges . In addition, you can set alerts , budgets , and more with cost management features.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/understand/plan-manage-costs

Creating a billing support request

In the Azure portal, you can open a billing support request by going to Help + support > New support request > Billing and then complete the wizard.

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