There are several different editions of Windows 10. If you want a detailed comparison chart showing the differences between the editions, then you can find one here: http://bit.ly/2H9XbJ6.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Azure Cost Management YouTube channel
If you want to learn more about Azure Cost Management to optimise spending in Azure, then have a look at the ACM YouTube channel. There’s a whole host of playlists, including a Quickstart one for a useful collection of short introductory videos. Find the channel here: http://bit.ly/2U55fA7.
Changing the license type of a SQL Server virtual machine
If you provision an all-inclusive SQL Server virtual machine from the Azure Marketplace then you’ll be charged a single fee which includes the cost of SQL Server. If you want to bring your own SQL Server licences to that virtual machine via the Azure Hybrid Benefit, then you need to change the licence type of the virtual machine. You do this in the Azure Management Portal and simply change the licence type from Pay As You Go to the Azure Hybrid Benefit in the Configure settings of the VM. You can find instructions for that here: http://bit.ly/2Pd6miy.
If you’ve self-installed SQL Server on an Azure virtual machine, then again, you’re probably intending to bring your own licences. The Product Terms states that you need to indicate when you’re using the Azure Hybrid Benefit – which is what happened above – but this time you need to first register the SQL Server VM with the Resource Provider, and then activate the Azure Hybrid Benefit as before. You’ll find instructions for the process of registering a SQL Sever VM in Azure with the SQL Server VM Resource Provider here: http://bit.ly/324kGLx.
PowerApps and Flow Licensing Guide
There’s an updated (July 2019) PowerApps and Flow Licensing Guide with text added to indicate that the Common Data Service will allow integration with Outlook and SharePoint. Find out more about the facilities enabled for app users here: http://bit.ly/2KIntEm, and find the guide in the brand new PowerApps and Flow section at http://bit.ly/MSLicensingGuides.
Azure Advisor
Azure Advisor is a free tool which helps you to optimise your Azure resources for high availability, security, performance, and cost by providing free, personalised recommendations based on your usage and configurations. If you’re new to Advisor, find a nice overview video here: http://bit.ly/2KRYT2N. If you want to know more about the ways that Advisor can save you money – for example optimising virtual machine spend by resizing or shutting down underutilised instances, then this is a useful page: http://bit.ly/2ZdW6X0.
Azure Management Portal app
If you’re responsible for the management of Azure resources then you’ll be familiar with the Azure Management Portal. Are you using its baby brother – the Azure mobile app? The idea is that you can keep track of your Azure resources while on-the-go, whether it’s keeping informed of alerts and health issues, or taking corrective action like starting and stopping VMs and web apps.
Find out more with links to download the app here: http://bit.ly/2ZcEdf9.
Predict costs and optimise spending for Azure: Microsoft Learn Course
There are some useful tools available in Azure to help customers to get a better understanding of cloud spend which can be leveraged for significant cost savings. To get an overview of these tools and some great best practice tips and tricks for saving on infrastructure and licensing costs, then the “Predict costs and optimise spending for Azure” course from Microsoft Learn is a productive way to spend an hour and a quarter. Find this free course here: http://bit.ly/33zHHHU.
Pricing guidance for SQL Server VMs in Azure
There’s an excellent article from Microsoft that gives some great advice on saving money when running SQL Server VMs in Azure. Tips include:
- using a free edition of SQL Server (Developer or Express) where possible
- choosing the SQL meter for temporary or periodic workloads, and bringing your own licence via the Azure Hybrid Benefit for workloads with a known lifetime and scale
- correctly sizing the VM – perhaps choosing one of the special VMs that are optimised for certain types of SQL Server workloads which have a high level of resources but a lower virtualised core count
- shutting down VMs where possible, perhaps using an automatic shutdown facility
Find the article here: http://bit.ly/2Ndp7jd.
Office 365 ProPlus Device-based Subscription for Education
Microsoft announce an Office 365 ProPlus Device-based Subscription for Education, which means that educational institutions can now assign an Office 365 ProPlus licence to a device rather than a user – useful, of course, where shared devices are used.
The experience for users is that those who DO have a User Subscription Licence including Office 365 ProPlus will be able to use the apps on the licensed device as well as their associated cloud services like OneDrive, while completely unlicensed users will be able to use the apps on the device and to save files locally. Using Office 365 ProPlus in this way doesn’t count towards one of the five allowed installations for a licensed user.
This new, free, add-on licence is available from 16 August, 2019 for customers who have an Enrollment for Education Solutions (EES) agreement where they’ve covered all Education Qualified Users with Office 365 ProPlus or a suite that includes it. They’re then entitled to as many Device-based Subscriptions as the number of Education Qualified Users.
The Device-based Subscription replaces the Lab and Library benefit that was the previous solution for institutions needing Office installed on a device basis, and note that this benefit remains for OVS-ES agreements where the new solution is not available.
Find the announcement from the Microsoft Education team here: http://bit.ly/30enR2Z, and refer to this page for deployment instructions: http://bit.ly/2KSJjnB.
Some updates to Reservations
Microsoft announce some updates to Reservations. Firstly, there are new Reservations available for Azure Databricks (1 and 3-year) and Azure App Service (3-year) which both give around 40% savings compared to Pay-As-You-Go pricing. Then there are a couple of new facilities: you can now automatically set your Reservations to renew, and can choose to assign them to a Resource Group within a Subscription rather than to the whole Subscription. Finally, Reservations can now be purchased using REST APIs, and there’s more data available to EA customers to help with optimising Reservations. Find the full article here: http://bit.ly/2Z2xUec.