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I created a few VMs in my Azure Free Trial subscription about a week ago to experiment with. I checked up on the charges today and noticed that I was being charged for the disks that were created along with the VMs. (I believe these are what is referred to as "managed disks", although the invoice just calls these "disks".)

When I create the VM, I am given a choice of Premium SSD, Standard SSD, and Standard HDD for the disk. So it seems that in addition to the costs of having a VM, one has to also factor in the costs of the disk that a VM has. Is that correct? It seems like charging a hotel guest for the bed in addition to the room rate to me.

Greg Graham
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Yes, you have to pay for the storage your vm is using, how is that surprising? every other cloud does the same (at least major ones do).

EDIT: you can use ephemeral disks to work around this to some extent, but vms with ephemeral disks CAN NOT be turned off.

PS: this answer was the only right answer at the time of writing (2019)

4c74356b41
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You don't need to have disk if you are trying some proof of concept and it can fit with temporary storage that comes with VM Otherwise you can add "data disk" while creating VM or later Also regarding cost, MS document says "Storage costs are charged separately for the Azure Storage used by the virtual machine. The status of the virtual machine has no relation to the Azure Storage charges that are incurred. You're always charged for any Azure Storage used by the disks"

itsavy
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  • thats not really true (or at the very least misleading). if a vm has a disk - you HAVE TO PAY for the disk. temp storage is free (when a vm has it), but no vm can run ONLY on temp storage disk. you HAVE to have a disk. and PAY for it. the only exclusion are ephemeral disks. they dont store state (ie reboot == clean\fresh vm), they dont cost money and it would seem compleling to use those for tests, however you have to remember - vms with ephemeral storage CAN NOT be shutdown, only deleted. – 4c74356b41 Aug 09 '23 at 10:50