Auto Shutdown and Auto Start an Azure VM 🛑

In this video, we are going to have a look at how you can automatically start and stop an Azure VM using automation tasks. With automation tasks, Azure offers a simple way to manage a specific resource or resource group using automation task templates. These templates depend on the Azure resource. For example, for an Azure virtual machine, you can create an automation task that turns on or turns off that virtual machine on a predefined schedule or sends the resource's monthly cost. This can be especially helpful if you are trying to reduce the cost of your Azure VMs.

An automation task is actually a workflow that runs on the Azure Logic Apps service behind the scenes. Automation tasks are currently in preview and support sending monthly cost for all Azure resources and special templates for Azure virtual machines, Azure Storage accounts, and Azure Cosmos DB.

📄 Links

📺 Agenda
0:00 Intro
0:39 Azure VM in the Azure Portal
1:01 Auto-Shutdown Azure VM
1:53 Automation Tasks
2:19 Create Tasks from Start and Stop templates
5:18 Logic Apps
7:58 Wrap up

⭐ About
Thomas works as a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft. He engages with the community and customers around the world to share his knowledge and collect feedback to improve the Azure cloud platform. Prior to joining the Azure engineering team (Cloud + AI), Thomas was a Lead Architect and Microsoft MVP, to help architect, implement and promote Microsoft cloud technology.
If you want to know more about Thomas, check out:

#Shutdown #Azure #VM #Microsoft #IaaS

[aadiprem]

Of all the documents and videos, your video explains the topic the best. Great Work. Keep it up!

[eusa]

Thomas, thank you SO much for this tutorial! I have been looking uip and down for a simple way to stop and restart Azure VM's on a schedule, and this was it!
Much respect to you, from a former Microsoft employee!

[richardwaldron]

Many thanks for posting this Thomas. This was just what I was looking for, I had some test VMs that I didn't enable the auto shutdown feature during their creation because I needed them to start running for others to use before i started work, so I just left them on which obviously got expensive very quickly. This will save me a lot of money and effort - cheers!

[derrickbradley]

What would it look like to schedule the autostart for M-F of every week?

[andreaskarz]

Wow, genius -- I will test this for my E2E-Test VM's -- thank you for this great tipp 🤙

[touchinline]

Thank you very much. Very well explained, clear and helpful.

[lanceharlan]

Thanks for the video. Much easier than how I was trying to run this task. Question - I am in Denver, selected Mountain Standard Time, but it seems to be off by an hour. I adjusted the time by an hour, but the tasks still ran an hour later than scheduled. IE - Task /VM off at 11pm VM on at 6am - Task ran at 12am and 7am. Tried different time zone with same results. Thx,

[pruthvishree]

thank you very much ..that was so simple and on-point info shared !!

[aghanawazan]

Thanks, it will be charged with stopped status so how to deallocate VM?
If the status says “Stopped (Deallocated), ” you're not being billed. If it says, “Stopped Allocated, ” you're still being billed for allocated virtual cores (not the software license itself).

[saulantonioanayapazos]

Thank you very much for the explanation, very detailed and "straight to the point"

[anugrahmuzakkipuar]

Thanks a lot for this video. This is the easiest way to do it!

[sandsandeeps]

Incredible video—profoundly insightful! Much gratitude for sharing such valuable content!

[dansmith]

Great Video, thank you, it was very helpful

[jaimegbertozi]

How could I use it to shutdown every weekdays, but on friday turn off and only turn on on monday, to keep turned it off on weekend? I didn't see any option to select the days I want to execute.

[livestronger]

Does Auto shut down hurt the OS? like pulling the power cord without shutting it down from inside the OS?

[dbardele]

Is there a way to sign in to the VM once it's started? I'm able to turn it on, but I have tasks (specifically, a Power BI data refresh using a Personal Gateway) that only run when I'm logged in. Can I do this somehow in Logic App Designer? Thanks for this video...very helpful to get me started.

[familytravel]

Any additional cost for auto shutdown and power ON the VM ?

[nida.arshad]

I have a doubt here.. how do I prevent the pubic IP’s of the VMs from changing whenever there is a start after a shutdown as changing IP address will create a block in the flow

[robb]

Instead of having the task use my credentials, is there a way to have it use an automation Run As or other service account?

[ArmandoHernandezR]

How do I schedule the vm to start Monday to Friday @8am - 8pm? Thanks