Fix: Azure Disabled over 49 cents? Beware of using a Java Virtual Machine on Microsoft Azure
I love my MSDN Azure account. I can spin up a demo/dev app or VM in seconds. In fact, it is so easy to create a virtual machine that Azure shut down my whole account!
Last night I spun up a Java Virtual Machine to play with some Android stuff. My mistake was that I didn’t read the Virtual Machine pricing warning:
“No, Azure credits in our MSDN offers are not applicable to Oracle software. In order to purchase Oracle software in the MSDN Azure Benefit subscription, customers need to turn off their {0} spending limit and pay at the regular pay-as-you-go rate. Otherwise, Oracle usage will hit the {1} spending limit and the subscription will be immediately disabled.”
Immediately disabled? Yup. Everything connected to the subscription was shut off, deallocated, rendered useless - even the free Web sites and the free Sendgrid email service.
The fix? I had to remove the spending limit from my account so I could pay $0.49 (49 cents) for the JVM usage. I still had $134.10 in credits remaining for regular usage with 6 days left in the billing month.
Now the restoration/clean-up begins… figuring out how to get the web sites and services back online.
To me, the preferable way would be for Azure to warn me when setting up a JVM that I had no way of paying for the service. In the alternative, shut down just the offending services – the ones that can’t be covered by the regular credits.
What a mess.