Microsoft announce the availability of some new constrained vCPU capable virtual machines. In this type of VM the vCPU count can be constrained to a half or a quarter of the original VM size allowing customers to reduce the cost of software licensing.

For instance, in the E8-4as v4 virtual machine there are 4 active vCPUs and 8 underlying vCPUs, and licensing for SQL Server is constrained to the active vCPU count, with only the operating system cost based on the underlying vCPUs.

Find the announcement regarding the most recent additions to the family here: https://bit.ly/3kUnbsX, and see all the VMs of this type, and their pricing, by searching for “constrained” on this page: https://bit.ly/3fofzxL.