AZ-900 Describe Azure architecture and services Practice Question
What does Azure Auto-Shutdown for virtual machines provide?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse 'shutting down' with 'deleting' or 'scaling'—Azure Auto-Shutdown only powers off the VM, it does not remove the VM or adjust its performance characteristics.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Automatic daily power-off of VMs at a configured time to reduce costs
Azure Auto-Shutdown is a cost-saving feature that automatically powers off virtual machines at a user-defined schedule (e.g., nightly at 7 PM). It helps reduce compute costs by ensuring VMs are not running when not needed, but does not delete or modify the VM's configuration or resources.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Automatic deletion of VMs that haven't been used for 30 days
Why it's wrong here
Azure VM Auto-Shutdown does not delete or deprovision any resources; it only changes the VM's state from Running to Stopped (deallocated). A VM that sits unused for 30 days remains indefinitely unless you explicitly delete it using the Portal, CLI, or an automation runbook. Cleanup based on idle time would require Azure Automation at Scale or an Azure Policy with a 'deployment in response to an event' approach, not Auto-Shutdown.
- ✓
Automatic daily power-off of VMs at a configured time to reduce costs
Why this is correct
Azure VM Auto-Shutdown lets you configure a daily fixed time when the virtual machine is automatically powered off and deallocated. This stops compute-hour billing (vCPU and instance usage) while leaving the VM's disks, IP, and configuration intact, which is why it is primarily used in dev/test workloads to cut costs overnight. It does not delete anything or adapt to performance demands; it simply schedules a hard stop and deallocation each day.
- ✗
Automatic scaling down of VM CPU when under low utilization
Why it's wrong here
Auto-Shutdown is a time-based schedule, not a load-based scaling mechanism. Unless you are running a Virtual Machine Scale Set and configure Autoscale to reduce instance count, Azure does not automatically downsize the CPU or memory of a single VM simply because utilization is low. Even Azure VM Hibernation just stops a VM when you explicitly invoke it, rather than reacting to CPU thresholds, so Auto-Shutdown cannot scale compute resources.
- ✗
Automatic failover of VMs to another region during outages
Why it's wrong here
Auto-Shutdown only powers off VMs on a recurring schedule; it has no awareness of regional outages and cannot initiate a failover. Cross-region disaster recovery is the job of Azure Site Recovery, which replicates disks and orchestrates failover to a secondary region, or of availability zone/region pairing configurations. This is an infrastructure resilience feature, not a scheduled cost-saving operation.
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Azure Regions and Geographies
Key term
User
A user is any person, system, or device that interacts with an IT service, resource, or identity system, typically authenticated through credentials and authorized to perform specific actions.
Key term
Feature
A feature is a distinct unit of functionality that delivers value to the user, often managed and tracked throughout the software development lifecycle.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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