Shutdown Azure VM when it is not required

My current setup for one of the projects requires a VM running in Azure – a tiny build server I set up just for myself. And I only need it when I actually working on the project. And the idea is to shut the VM down when I’m not working on the project. The fear was that one day I’ll forget to shut it down and I’ll be billed for time that I have not used.

So I’ve created a tiny script in PowerShell:

# Get your publishsettings file here: https://manage.windowsazure.com/publishsettings/
Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile "c:\Path\to\subscription\file.publishsettings"

Select-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName "MySubscriptionName"

Stop-AzureVM -Name myVmName -ServiceName myVmName -Force

NB: you need -Force parameter otherwise the script will prompt for Y/N and will require user intervention.

And then I hooked the script as part of shutdown on my work PC:

  1. Run gpedit.msc
  2. Go to Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Scripts -> Shutdown
    2015-07-04 15_03_14-Local Group Policy Editor

    1. Open Shutdown option and switch to PowerShell tab; Add your script there.
    2. PROFIT!

Now your VM will be shut-down when you shut-down your PC.

Another alternative was to have free web-site running on Azure, deploy there a Web-Job that constantly polls on your PC if it is working or not. And if your PC if offline, shut-down the VM. But this sounds like a lot of work and you’ll have to expose some sort of publicly available endpoint on your PC. So nothing fancy!