Why Am I Getting Billed for NFA Services I Didn’t Use?

Applies to: All Nerdio For Azure (NFA) customers 

Query

I have stopped using my NFA account last month, however, I received an invoice from Microsoft for the Azure subscription. Why am I getting billed for the services I didn’t use?

Resolution

Nerdio for Azure (NFA) offers a “pay-as-you-go” billing model to its customers.  You pay only for the Nerdio services you need, for as long as you want, and there are no hidden costs or termination fees once you stop using them. 

Read the article below to understand how NFA billing works: 

https://help.nerdio.net/hc/en-us/articles/360018151692-How-does-NFA-billing-work-

Now that you know how NFA billing works, let us explore why you are getting billed for the Nerdio services you didn’t use.   

You are getting billed from Microsoft for the Azure subscription, where Nerdio was deployed, probably because you failed to shut down the VMs that were created by default when you first provisioned Nerdio.  If you want to stop Microsoft from billing you for these resources you should: 

• either destroy your Nerdio account, which will delete all resources, or  
• power them off temporarily

Steps to destroy your Nerdio account 

Follow the steps in this article to destroy your Nerdio account. 

If you do not wish to delete your account, Nerdio offers you a way to temporarily shut down Nerdio resources for your account. Let us explore the steps involved.

Steps to temporarily shut down Nerdio resources  

1. Shutting down servers from your account

Log in to Nerdio Admin Portal (NAP) and locate the NFA account which you want to temporarily shut down (say account 5104):

Login to the selected NFA account (say 5104) and then from the main menu, select “Servers” option: 

You will be directed to the “Manage Servers” page of your account:

On the "Manage Servers" page itself, click “Edit” icon next to the disk size to change the disk type of each server’s disk from P10 to S10 (SSD to HDD): 

Please be patient as this step will take some time. 

Once you change the disk type for each server, expand the "Server options" menu and select the “Stop” option corresponding to each server to stop individual servers in your NFA account: 

Follow the instructions on the "Stop Server" page:

Similarly shut down all servers in your account, except DC01.

Note: It is advisable to shut down all servers, except DC01. Select the configuration for DC01 to a small B-series VM: B2s. DC01 ideally should be kept running so that we have some heartbeat for your account.

2. Shutting down user desktops from your account

Note: Since NFA Core accounts do not support desktops, this step does not apply to NFA Core accounts 

Once all servers are shut down, select “Users” tab from the main menu. On the "Manage Users" page, expand menu options corresponding to a user record:  

Click "Shut down desktop" option to shut down each users' desktop. Let us start with the first user -Andy IT Admin. Click "Confirm" button: 

Note: All VDI/personal desktop users have "Shut down desktop" option under "Generate RDP file" menu. So make sure you explicitly shut down desktops for all VDI users. If a user is a RDS desktop user, then shutting down RDSH server on "Manage Servers" page automatically shuts down their desktop.