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The Virtual Machine is in the process of being stopped and deallocated as requested by an authorized user or process. No other action is required at this time

ramez elkhouri 0 Reputation points
2026-05-26T18:32:03.28+00:00

Virtual machine is starting,

The Virtual Machine is in the process of being stopped and deallocated as requested by an authorized user or process. No other action is required at this time.

Azure Virtual Machines
Azure Virtual Machines

An Azure service that is used to provision Windows and Linux virtual machines.

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  1. Jerald Felix 13,500 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2026-05-29T04:55:50.7466667+00:00

    Hello ramez elkhouri,

    Greetings! Thanks for raising this question in Q&A forum.

    No need to worry this message is actually informational and not an error! The message "The Virtual Machine is in the process of being stopped and deallocated as requested by an authorized user or process" simply means that a stop/deallocate action was triggered on your VM, either by a user, an automation script, a scheduled task, or an Azure Policy. Azure is just letting you know the VM is shutting down gracefully.

    The situation you're describing where the VM appears to be "starting" while this message is showing — happens when two operations overlap. For example, if someone triggered a Start while a Stop/Deallocate was still in progress, Azure will show both states briefly until the current operation completes.

    Here's what you should do step by step:

    Step 1: Wait for the Current Operation to Finish

    Don't click Start or Stop repeatedly that can cause further overlap. Give it a few minutes and let the current deallocate operation complete on its own. The VM's status will stabilize to either Stopped (Deallocated) or Running once the operation is done.

    Step 2: Check the Current VM Status in the Azure Portal

    Go to the Azure Portal, navigate to Virtual Machines, and open your VM. Look at the Status field at the top. Once it shows Stopped (Deallocated), the operation is complete and you can safely start the VM again if needed.

    Step 3: Start the VM if it Was Stopped Unintentionally

    If this stop was not something you or your team triggered on purpose, simply click the Start button from the VM overview page in the Azure Portal, or use the Azure CLI command az vm start --name <YourVMName> --resource-group <YourResourceGroup>.

    Step 4: Find Out What Triggered the Stop

    If you didn't initiate this and want to find out what caused it, go to your VM in the Azure Portal, click on Activity Log in the left menu, and filter by the time the event occurred. This will show you exactly which user, automation, or process triggered the deallocate action.

    Step 5: Prevent Unintended Stops in the Future

    If this keeps happening unexpectedly, check for any Azure Automation runbooks, DevOps pipelines, scheduled scripts, or Azure Policies that may be configured to stop VMs automatically — for example, an auto-shutdown schedule. You can check for auto-shutdown settings directly on the VM under Operations → Auto-shutdown in the portal and disable it if needed.

    A quick note on billing once your VM reaches the Stopped (Deallocated) state, compute charges stop. However, your managed disks and any reserved public IP addresses will still incur charges, so keep that in mind.

    If this answer helps you kindly accept the answer which will help others who have similar questions.

    Best Regards,

    Jerald Felix.

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  2. AI answer

    2026-05-26T18:32:17.8433333+00:00

    The message means Azure Resource Health is reporting the annotation VirtualMachineDeallocationInitiated:

    "The Virtual Machine is in the process of being stopped and deallocated as requested by an authorized user or process. No other action is required at this time."

    Key points:

    1. Customer-initiated action
      The stop/deallocation was triggered by an authorized user or an automation (for example, a script, schedule, DevOps pipeline, or policy), not by a platform failure.
    2. Transitional state
      While this annotation is present, the VM is moving from Running/Stopped (Allocated) toward Stopped (Deallocated). In this state, the VM is being taken off the underlying host and will stop incurring compute charges once fully Deallocated.
    3. No remediation required
      The platform considers this an informational event. No corrective action is required unless the stop/deallocation was unintentional. If the VM needs to run, simply start it again from the Azure portal, CLI, PowerShell, or API.
    4. Billing behavior
      When the VM reaches Deallocated, compute charges for the VM stop. Disks and networking may still incur charges.

    If the VM appears to be “starting” while this message shows, it indicates overlapping operations (for example, a start requested while a previous stop/deallocation is still completing). Wait for the current operation to finish, then retry the desired action (start or stop) once the VM’s power state stabilizes.

    References:

    AI-generated content may be incorrect. Read our transparency notes for more information.

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