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:

“I have a MSDN Azure Benefit subscription. Can I use my monthly Azure credits to purchase Oracle software?”

“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.