VM states (running, stopped, deallocated) in Azure - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Azure VM States Management

📖 Scenario: You are managing virtual machines (VMs) in Microsoft Azure. Each VM can be in one of three states: running, stopped, or deallocated. You want to create a simple configuration that tracks the state of each VM in your resource group.

🎯 Goal: Build a dictionary in Python that holds VM names as keys and their states as values. Then, add a configuration variable to filter VMs by a specific state. Finally, write code to list all VMs currently in that state.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called vm_states with exact VM names and states

Add a variable called filter_state to specify which VM state to filter

Use a for loop with variables vm and state to iterate over vm_states.items()

Create a list called filtered_vms that contains VM names matching filter_state

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Cloud administrators often need to track and manage the states of virtual machines to optimize costs and performance.

💼 Career

Understanding how to represent and filter VM states programmatically is essential for roles in cloud operations and infrastructure management.

1

Create the VM states dictionary

Create a dictionary called vm_states with these exact entries: 'vm1': 'running', 'vm2': 'stopped', 'vm3': 'deallocated', 'vm4': 'running', 'vm5': 'stopped'.

Azure

# Create the vm_states dictionary with exact VM names and states
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary with VM names as keys and their states as values.

2

Add a filter state variable

Add a variable called filter_state and set it to the string 'running' to filter VMs by this state.

Azure

vm_states = {
    'vm1': 'running',
    'vm2': 'stopped',
    'vm3': 'deallocated',
    'vm4': 'running',
    'vm5': 'stopped'
}
# Add the filter_state variable below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the string 'running' to the variable filter_state.

3

Filter VMs by state

Use a for loop with variables vm and state to iterate over vm_states.items(). Inside the loop, add VMs to a list called filtered_vms if their state matches filter_state. Initialize filtered_vms as an empty list before the loop.

Azure

vm_states = {
    'vm1': 'running',
    'vm2': 'stopped',
    'vm3': 'deallocated',
    'vm4': 'running',
    'vm5': 'stopped'
}
filter_state = 'running'
# Create filtered_vms list and add VMs matching filter_state
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Start with an empty list, then loop through each VM and its state. Add the VM to the list if the state matches filter_state.

4

Complete the VM filtering configuration

Add a final line that sets a variable called result equal to the filtered_vms list to complete the configuration.

Azure

vm_states = {
    'vm1': 'running',
    'vm2': 'stopped',
    'vm3': 'deallocated',
    'vm4': 'running',
    'vm5': 'stopped'
}
filter_state = 'running'
filtered_vms = []
for vm, state in vm_states.items():
    if state == filter_state:
        filtered_vms.append(vm)
# Set result equal to filtered_vms
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the list filtered_vms to a new variable result to complete the setup.