This diagram separates the cost of a SQL PaaS solution into two components: SQL Server (shown as the blue database icon) and compute (shown as the blue cloud) which are all the other costs associated with running these solutions. Customers…
There are two parts to licensing Azure Dedicated Host: the infrastructure of the Azure Dedicated Host solution which hosts the virtual machines, and then the software for whatever is running inside the virtual machines. Reservations are available for the infrastructure…
There are 5-year Reserved Instances available for a handful of virtual machines – the HX series for example. For this series, the 1- and 3-year Reserved Instances give an estimated 25% and 50% saving on the compute costs of the…
When you purchase a Reserved Instance, you can choose to optimize for instance size flexibility which means that the Reserved Instance isn’t tied to an exact virtual machine type, but rather to a family of virtual machines. This means that…
When you purchase a Reservation to prepay for the base compute cost of a virtual machine it’s known as a Reserved Instance. At the time of purchase you choose the VM type and the Azure data center region: a D16…
A Reservation for the compute part of a virtual machine is known as a Reserved Instance. This section gives details on how to purchase a Reserved Instance and how instance size flexibility works.
If a customer’s needs change so much that they no longer need any sort of Reservation, they can cancel them, if required. Credit is calculated for the remaining term and the balance is refunded. Microsoft currently (May 2025) don’t charge…
The scope of a Reservation can be changed at any time, but when other attributes need to be changed – the term, the data center, the virtual machine family etc. – that’s when an Exchange needs to be carried out.…
Originally, Reservations didn’t automatically renew – you were just sent notifications about upcoming Reservation expiration. Then, in March 2024, Microsoft announced that you could opt in to have your Reservation automatically renew, and by June 2024 it was turned on…
For the four Reservations for Azure services that we’re considering in this section you can choose to pay upfront or monthly and there are no penalties for choosing a monthly option – it’s literally the full price divided by 12…