what's the difference between deallocated and stopped ? my test VM burning rate too high

Question

Hi there

I am doing some tests. I scheduled a test VM to shutdown and deallocate overnight.

But tonight, I noticed in azure portal, the VM status showing as deallocated, but the stopped button is still available to click

I clicked stopped, I saw a message that a public IP will not be kept. That's OK

The VM (Standard_D4s_v3) is burning about $10.00 NZD, however Microsoft monthly price listed is 275.93 NZD

Can someone shed some light on this problem

Kind Regards

Michael

Answer 1

Hi @Anonymous

If your VM is not running, it will have one of two states — Stopped, or Stopped (deallocated).

Azure’s Stopped State
When you are logged in to the operating system of an Azure VM, you can issue a command to shut down the server. This will kick you out of the OS and stop all processes, but will maintain the allocated hardware (including the IP addresses currently assigned). If you find the VM in the Azure console, you’ll see the state listed as “Stopped”. The biggest thing you need to know about this state is that you are still being charged by the hour for this instance.

Azure’s Deallocated State
The other way to stop your virtual machine is through Azure itself, whether that’s through the console, Powershell, or the Azure CLI. When you stop a VM through Azure, rather than through the OS, it goes into a “Stopped (deallocated)” state. This means that any non-static public IPs will be released, but you’ll also stop paying for the VM’s compute costs. This is a great way to save money on your Azure costs when you don’t need those VMs running, and is the state that ParkMyCloud puts your VMs in when they are parked.

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Answer 2

Just to add to the points, the extra deductions is for storage, NIC cost etc. You still pay for these regardless