AZURE HYBRID BENEFIT: WINDOWS SERVER

The Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server enables customers to bring their own licenses to license the Windows Server part of an Azure virtual machine, and is often used in conjunction with Reserved Instances and Azure Savings Plans to optimize costs.

Customers are eligible for the Azure Hybrid Benefit if they have active Software Assurance on Windows Server Standard or Datacenter Core licenses purchased through any Volume Licensing agreement, or if they have purchased Software Subscriptions for Windows Server Standard or Datacenter Core licenses through CSP.

If you’re a customer who has an on-premises server farm which is being migrated to the cloud you may have “spare” Windows Server licenses with SA as on-premises servers are decommissioned and it’s ideal to be able to reuse those licenses with virtual machines in Azure. If you’re provisioning net new virtual machines in Azure then purchasing Software Subscriptions is a useful choice to license the Windows Server component of the Azure virtual machine.

Note that up to April 2023, Microsoft required a customer to have a minimum of 16 Windows Server Core licenses before they could take advantage of the Azure Hybrid Benefit. These licenses could have been all Volume Licensing licenses, all Software Subscriptions, or a combination of both. However, on April 1, 2023 this requirement was removed from the Product Terms. The first graphic below shows the original text, and the second the adjusted text from the Product Terms: