Hibernate Azure VM

Question

Why doesn't Azure support a hibernation state for VMs? AWS EC2 instances have supported it for years. Is this feature on the roadmap? I'd be very happy to learn that Azure is working on supporting hibernation. Even happier to learn that it would work with GPU-enabled VMs too.

Answer 1

This feature is now in public preview: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/hibernate-resume?tabs=osLimitsLinux%2CenablehiberPortal%2CcheckhiberPortal%2CenableWithPortal%2CcliLHE%2CUbuntu18HST%2CPortalDoHiber%2CPortalStatCheck%2CPortalStartHiber%2CPortalImageGallery

Answer 2

There has been preview feature since stable/2021-07-01 for hibernation:

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/compute/virtual-machines/deallocate?tabs=HTTP
  • hibernate query parameter
• you also need to enable hibernation when creating virtual machine
  • https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/compute/virtual-machines/create-or-update?tabs=HTTP#create-a-vm-with-hibernationenabled

Sadly there is other documentation or preview announcement for this feature. Azure SDK for Java ticket is kind of only documentation I found: https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-java/issues/25497

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Also, VM has three states: running, stopped and deallocated and even more transient states: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/states-billing

Answer 3

@The A Man

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

Firstly, apologies for the delay in responding.

As you are aware currently there is no support for hibernation in Azure Virtual Machines. Azure VM's have only 2 states (i.e. start and stop) modes.
Hopefully that feature might be available in near future, however we do not have any ETA about the same.

I request you to submit this feature request on user voice link below:

https://feedback.azure.com/d365community/forum/ec2f1827-be25-ec11-b6e6-000d3a4f0f1c

Also, I found this work around on serverfault here. This is a old thread (I have not tested this approach), you can check if that helps.

Hope that helps.
Please 'Accept as answer' if the provided information is helpful, so that it can help others in the community looking for help on similar topics.

Answer 4

Azure does not support, but the new Dev Box offering supports it?
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-developer-community-blog/introducing-microsoft-dev-box/ba-p/3412063

Answer 5

Is there a way to setup that hybernate will take effect if VM is 30 Min inactive?

With Costs stopped on hybernation.