How to postpone virtual machine from turning on for entire month using autoshutdownschedule

Question

I am trying to postpone the VM from turning on for up to a month by using the autoshutdownschedule tag, I know I can do it by putting in the specific dates, however is there a quicker way?

Thanks very much for any future help,

Jasmin

Answer 1

Hello Jasmin Hobden

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Platform, thanks for posting your query here.

Unfortunately, the autoshutdownschedule tag only supports specific dates and times, and there is no built-in way to quickly postpone a VM from turning on for up to a month.

However, you can achieve this by using Azure Automation and a PowerShell script.

Here are the high-level steps to achieve this:

1. Create an Azure Automation account and configure it to manage your VM's.
2. Create a PowerShell script that will disable the auto-shutdown schedule for your VM.
3. Schedule the PowerShell script to run at the desired time to disable the auto-shutdown schedule.
4. Schedule another PowerShell script to run at the desired time to re-enable the auto-shutdown schedule.

Here is an example PowerShell script that you can use to disable the auto-shutdown schedule for a VM:

$resourceGroupName = "myResourceGroup"
$vmName = "myVM"

$vm = Get-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -Name $vmName
$vm.EnableAutoShutdown = $false
Update-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -VM $vm

You can modify this script to include the desired time period for disabling the auto-shutdown schedule. Similarly, you can create another PowerShell script to re-enable the auto-shutdown schedule at the desired time.

I hope this helps!

Answer 2

Hi,

You can turn off the VM and then set a lock on Azure VM so anyone who wants to turn on will get an error.

You can read more about Lock here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/management/lock-resources?tabs=json

Regards,

Karthik Srinivas