Power Down Your Azure VM when you no Longer Need It

Introduction

Azure has introduced a big change on powered down virtual machine. When you power down your
Azure VM, it will be deallocated which means that you are no longer being billed  while your machine
is on powered down state.  This is a very good Azure initiative because it aligns to the consumer
needs to cut cost on their Infrastructure expenses.

This is highly contradictory on how we manage our on-premise servers which we don't usually
shutdown.

Figure 1. Powered down azure VM

Advantages of Shutting Down Your Server When you no longer

need it.

1.  Minimize threats.

If you keep the machine alive for 24 hours and you are on a live IP you are exposing the server to
possible hackers. Shutting down your server when  you no longer need it  minimize your attacker
window. You can even make use of it a security mechanism  by designing a cloud  infrastructure
in which you can 'hot switch' your servers.

2.  Think Green

When you no longer need the machine power it down. Unused powered on machine consumes
energy. Let’s contribute to green computing by powering down unneeded servers at the same
time saving a lot of dollars.

3.  Do Away With Unnecessary Server Objects When You Shutdown

When you don’t shutdown your machine it generates several  server items that in the  long run
your computer will  no longer need such temporary files, disk caches, page files, open file descriptors,
pipes, sockets, zombie processes  and memory leaks. All these things go away when you shut down
your machine.

Turn it on On-Demand

The advantage of having you Virtual machine on Azure is that you can power it on anytime. Azure portal
is an Html based portal which means you can power-on your server when you need it even if you are
mobile or on the move using  your tablet or any other mobile devices.