Hi @Graham Woolley ,
You will be charged for the compute costs of an Azure VM if the VM is in running state. If you stopp and deallocate the VM, for instance via Azure Portal navigate to the VM and click on Stop
.
If it's always the same time in a week the VM needs to be up and running you can use different options to schedule the start and stop of the VM. For instance you can use Azure Automation for this scheduled tasks.
Another option to safe money is to change the VM size. You have to stop the VM and choose a different VM size. After the change is applied you can start the VM again, Resizing a running Azure VM is not possible.
You will be charged for the disk(s) of an Azure VM as long as the disk(s) exists. It doesn't matter if the VM is in running or stopped/deallocate status. This is because the disk(s) are using storage in the Azure datacenter all the time. But you can reduce the costs of disk(s). The costs depend on the disk type and size, Standard HDD -> Standard SSD -> Premium SSD (from low to higher costs).
(If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote and/or accept as answer, thank you)
Regards
Andreas Baumgarten