Windows Azure Virtual Machines (VMs)

More and more developers nowadays use virtual machines for testing their software or reproducing the real environment for testing. This year I switched to Windows Azure too. Of course, I installed all the required software including a well-known Microsoft Office suite. To save some money I keep the cloud VM turned off for the weekend and keep it working for the working days. But how surprised I was when I switched the VM off and then, after some days of absence, turned it on. Typically you'll  see a dialog for activation the software anew. But not for Windows, only for Microsoft Office :


It's allowed to activate the Microsoft Office anew. So, you can click the Next button to see the following window:


You have to repeat these steps each time you want to keep the machine off and turn it on when required.

There is a difference between turning the virtual machine off in the VM itself or in the Azure Management portal. The first option keeps the machine running under the hood. Only the latter allows to release resources taken by the VM and causes the described issue later.

I'd like to admit that the activation issue has been alive for a long time and I am not sure whether it will be fixed in the future at all.

 But some day I had to increase the VM performance. So, I changed the virtual machine size as shown on screenshot below:

 

You can imagine how surprised I was seeing the following dialog in Microsoft Office after restarting the machine:



As you may see, you have to be ready for making emergency calls to Microsoft :-)

While we see a lot of advertisement and buzz words, a bunch of issues remains alive that make developers' life inconvenient. At these moments I remember the following words said by Microsoft Ex-CEO: developers, developers, developers...!

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