Windows Azure is a cloud-based operating system developed by Microsoft. It has partnered with Century Internet in China and periodically offers free trial activities. A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to receive a trial qualification. It has the highest configuration among the cloud hosts I have used, both in terms of specifications and bandwidth. I have to admit that Microsoft is very generous.

Unfortunately, recently my Windows Azure account was suspended due to exceeding the free quota. I received an email reminder when my usage exceeded 70%, but I didn't pay much attention to it at that time. It wasn't until a friend told me that his website couldn't be accessed that I became concerned (his website was hosted on my Azure). I logged into the Azure portal and found that the service was suspended.

It was a tragic event, as several websites' data were stored on it. I quickly called customer service to explain the situation. The customer service representative was very helpful and assisted me in filing a ticket to restart the service. It was restored to normal the next day. However, the frustrating part was that the IP address of the restarted virtual machine changed. This is why some friends complained that Azure virtual machines couldn't be accessed. You can log in to the Windows Azure portal to check if the public IP has changed.

I would like to give a piece of advice to friends who are currently using Windows Azure: regularly check your usage in the billing section to avoid exceeding the limit and getting suspended. It can be very tragic. Through various experiences, I have realized the importance of regularly backing up data. You can read more about automatic backup of VPS data using Qiniu cloud storage here.