Azure VM Stopped Deallocated

In some scenarios, you might see that the Azure Virtual Machine has stopped and deallocated automatically. In this comprehensive article, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know about Azure VM deallocation, its benefits, and how to manage your VMs effectively.

Azure VM Stopped Deallocated

When you stop a VM in Azure through the portal (rather than shutting down from within the operating system), the VM enters a “Stopped (deallocated)” state. This is fundamentally different from simply powering off a machine.

Deallocation means that Azure has released the physical compute resources assigned to your VM. As a result:

• You no longer incur compute charges
• Any non-static public IP addresses will be released
• The VM’s status is maintained, but hardware resources are freed up

Benefits of Using the Stopped (Deallocated) State

1. Cost Savings

The primary benefit of deallocating your VMs when not in use is cost savings. When a VM is deallocated, you’re no longer charged for:

• Compute costs
• Load balancer basic usage fees
• Network bandwidth fees

You’ll still be billed for:

• Storage costs for the OS disk and data disks
• Any static public IP addresses
• Reserved instances (if applicable)

For organizations with development or test environments that don’t need to run 24/7, this can translate to significant monthly savings.

2. Resource Efficiency

Azure continually works to allocate compute resources efficiently across its data centers. When you deallocate VMs, you’re helping free up resources for other users. According to Microsoft, this is especially important as they invest in additional infrastructure to ensure VM availability.

3. Environment Management

For development teams, the ability to deallocate development and test environments during off-hours provides a clean way to manage resources while maintaining the VM’s configuration and attached storage.

Azure VM Stopped (Deallocated Automatically)

If you find yourself in this scenario, ensure you consider a few key points.

1. Ensure you have sufficient Azure Credits to run the Virtual Machine and are not approaching your Azure Credit limit.
2. There may be an urgent update from Microsoft.
3. Another important point is that anyone might have done this action manually. You can check out the information below to determine what has gone wrong.

Check out the information below

• Log in to the Azure Portal.
• Search for Virtual Machines and click on the search result Virtual Machines.
• Now, on the Virtual Machines page, you can see a list of Virtual Machines created by you. Click on the specific virtual machine where you want to check the activity.
• Click on the “activity log” and then specify the period when you want to look at it. This will provide you with a clear picture of the actions that have been performed for the specific virtual machine.

Common Scenarios When VMs Enter Deallocated State

VMs can enter the deallocated state through several scenarios:

1. Manual deallocation: When you explicitly stop and deallocate a VM through the Azure portal, CLI, PowerShell, or API
2. Automated shutdown: Using Azure Automation or Azure DevOps pipelines to deallocate VMs on a schedule automatically
3. Eviction: In specific scenarios, Azure may evict VMs using a deallocation policy, particularly with low-priority VMs
4. Infrastructure maintenance: During certain maintenance events, Azure might temporarily deallocate VMs

Best Practices for Managing Deallocated VMs

Based on my experience working with hundreds of Azure deployments, here are my top recommendations for effectively managing deallocated VMs:

1. Implement Automated Deallocations

Use Azure Automation runbooks to automatically deallocate non-production VMs during off-hours (nights and weekends). This can save 70% or more on compute costs for development environments.

2. Use Resource Locks

For critical VMs that should never be deallocated accidentally, consider implementing Azure Resource Locks.

3. Implement Start/Stop V2

Azure offers a Start/Stop V2 solution that provides enhanced VM management capabilities, including:

• Scheduled start/stop times
• Auto-shutdown notifications
• Sequenced start/stop for dependent VMs

4. Monitor VM States

Set up Azure Monitor alerts to notify you when VMs enter unexpected states or when deallocated VMs run into start-up issues.

FAQs

Conclusion

Understanding and effectively managing the “Stopped (Deallocated)” state in Azure VMs is a crucial skill for optimizing your cloud costs and resource utilization. By implementing the right deallocation strategies, you can significantly reduce your Azure spending while maintaining the flexibility to scale back up quickly when needed.

Remember that deallocation completely releases compute resources, which means you’ll save on costs but may experience longer startup times and potential IP address changes when you restart your VMs.

If you found your Azure Virtual Machine has stopped and deallocated automatically. Ensure to check out the information mentioned in this article. By following the best practices outlined in this article, you can minimize these challenges.

Thanks for reading this article !!!

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• Azure Virtual Machine Tutorial
• How to access Azure VM (Virtual Machine)
• Azure virtual machine DNS (FQDN)

Rajkishore

I am Rajkishore, and I am a Microsoft Certified IT Consultant. I have over 14 years of experience in Microsoft Azure and AWS, with good experience in Azure Functions, Storage, Virtual Machines, Logic Apps, PowerShell Commands, CLI Commands, Machine Learning, AI, Azure Cognitive Services, DevOps, etc. Not only that, I do have good real-time experience in designing and developing cloud-native data integrations on Azure or AWS, etc. I hope you will learn from these practical Azure tutorials. Read more.