I've "Visual Studio Enterprise" azure subscription. I initially got few credits. I think it was $200 for free. Earlier it used to show static remaining credit i.e. if I built two VMs and it cost $50 it would show $150. But since few days may be just past day remaining credit is continuously reducing.
The activities I have done so far. Earlier I was unable to connect to VM as outgoing connection was not allowed from my organisation. Since I have got permission I'm able to connect. After that I installed Active Directory Services on one of the VM.
I don't think till this step my credit amount got reduced except for the VMs I built.
I was trying to start and stop the VM using powershell but I wasn't able to do so. So I installed powershell azure modules. using Connect-AzAccount to connect and then used Start-AzVM and Stop-AzVm to start and stop the VMs. Just to clarify I keep the VMs in shut down mode so I don't keep getting billed.
Still the amount is being deducted. I ran Disconnect-AzAccount on suspicion that it might be causing the issue but still it hasn't fixed the issue.
Can any one help here?
There are mainly two ways to stop VM:
Stop the Azure VM locally: When you connect to the Azure VM with remote desktop, go to the Power options within Windows and select Shutdown, this will essentially “turn off” the VM and stop it from running. However, even though the VM won’t be running you WILL still be paying for the Virtual machine hardware allocation. Doing this will cause the Azure Portal to report the status of the VM to be “Stopped”.
Another way is to click Stop in the virtual machine page on the portal(or use Azure PowerShell or Azure CLI). Instead of just shutting down the Operating System, Azure will also deallocate the hardware (CPU and Memory) allocation. Doing this will cause the Azure Portal to report the status of the VM to be “Stopped (Deallocated)”.
Overall, both methods will reduce cost but not none of cost. You do still pay for the Azure Storage account usage, which is used for storig the VM’s .vhd disk image file. As a result, you will still incur some cost for the storage, but at least you will save on the VM resources.