Reboot Vs Deallocating a azure windows 2016 datacenter VM

Question

Hello,

I just found out our tech team was Deallocating rather than rebooting our LIVE production VM on Azure.

Deallocating seems to be overkill here when you can go into the Azure Portal or App to restart a system that you cannot login to.

So my Question is why would they deallocate and not reboot when rebooting is much faster or is deallocating and rebooting the same time to restart a system?

I am getting an answer from them "that they are doing what is necessary to ensure the site comes back online as well as protect the integrity of the infrastructure" seems like BS to me

I Grew up and worked with Microsoft servers, cisco firewalls, etc since windows NT 3.51 and I myself managed this system before and I disagree and don't understand why it would be better to deallocate then a reboot can someone help me understand

Answer 1

Hello, @David J. Petrin !

How does deallocating a VM compare to restarting a VM?

Deallocating is typically a cost saving measure as you are not billed for this state because it releases the Azure resources associated with the VM. While deallocating can be used to address hardware/infrastructure related issues, those tend to be less common and addressed in planned redundancy via availability options. Restarts/power states can be used for OS level issues and are likely to save a noteworthy amount of time in getting back online.

Resources:

• States and billing status of Azure Virtual Machines
• Availability options for Azure Virtual Machines

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