Tag Archives: Azure Services

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.

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.

Azure Dedicated Host

Microsoft announce the preview of Azure Dedicated Host, a new Azure service that enables customers to run Linux and Windows virtual machines on single-tenant physical servers.

So, how’s this all licensed? Well, first of all you choose the type of Azure Dedicated Host that you want. Currently there are three types, each based on a particular VM series: Dsv3, Esv3 or Fsv2, and you can run any virtual machines from the chosen family on a particular Azure Dedicated Host. Each Azure Dedicated Host has a specific number of vCPUs available and that dictates how many virtual machines you can run.

So, for example, the Dsv3 series Azure Dedicated Host has 64 vCPUs, so you could run 32 x D2s v3 VMs since they have 2 vCPUs each, or mix and match with 2 x D8s v3 (8 vCPUs each) + 2 x D16s v3 (16 vCPUs each) + 8 x D2s v3 (2 vCPUs each). You then pay an hourly charge for the Azure Dedicated Host, regardless of how many virtual machines are running, and that’s $3.38 per hour for the Dsv3 Series.

This hourly charge is for the compute power of the virtual machines, so then you need to pay for the software you want to run in those virtual machines. This can either be done on a metered, hourly basis, or you can bring your own Windows Server and SQL Server licences if you’re eligible for the Azure Hybrid Benefit – either through Software Assurance or if you have a Server Subscription bought through CSP.

How many licences do you bring? Well, you can follow the usual rules for licensing virtual machines in Azure, or you can license all the physical cores on the Azure Dedicated Host with Windows Server Datacenter or SQL Server Enterprise licences to be eligible for running an unlimited number of virtual machines. In terms of useful resources, find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2M1TKIB, find the Azure Dedicated Host pricing page here: http://bit.ly/2KkxB6m, and an updated FAQ on the Azure Hybrid Benefit here: http://bit.ly/2g1HEwS.

Azure Lighthouse

Microsoft announce the General Availability of Azure Lighthouse (http://bit.ly/2XXR45e) on 11 July, 2019. This tool is primarily aimed at Service Providers who manage Azure resources across a number of customer tenants, but it’s also useful for customers who need to manage their own resources across multiple tenants. Typically, in order to manage Azure resources for a customer, a Service Provider has to sign in to the Azure Management portal using an account associated with that customer’s tenant, and if there are tasks to be done across multiple customer tenants, it’s a time-consuming process accessing each customer’s tenant separately.

Azure Lighthouse makes use of the Azure delegated resource management capability which, through a logical projection of customer resources onto a Service Provider’s tenant context, gives that partner a single control plane to view and manage Azure resources across all of their customers. Even better, it works across the different ways that a customer may have purchased Azure such as through an EA, CSP or directly from Azure.com. The service is free to use, and customers can be onboarded to Azure delegated resource management either by using Azure Resource Manager templates or by publishing a private or public Managed Services offer to the Azure Marketplace.

To find out more, tackle these resources in order:

  • Introducing managed services offers in Azure Marketplace – 20-minute session from Inspire: http://bit.ly/2M6BGMI
  • Azure Lighthouse: Shifting the managed services paradigm towards greater efficiency and security – 1-hour session from Inspire: http://bit.ly/2YmBXl9
  • Azure Lighthouse documentation: http://bit.ly/2Y04Zrf

Update on Microsoft Reservations

Microsoft Reservations are a way of pre-paying for certain Azure services to get the best possible pricing. The first Reservation from Microsoft was a Reserved Instance – a way of paying upfront for the compute part of a virtual machine – and Microsoft continues to extend what, and where, Reservations are available.

In February 2019, Microsoft announced that Reserved Instance discounts had been extended to apply both to Classic Virtual Machines and Cloud Services, and that Reserved Instances could be applied to Dev/Test Subscriptions acquired through an Enterprise Agreement or through Azure.com. Find that announcement here: http://bit.ly/2KEIVdP.

More recently, in April 2019, they announced that the Reservations family had grown to include two new members. Firstly,

SQL Data Warehouse Reserved Capacity allows customers to buy compute Data Warehouse Units (cDWU) with either 1-year or 3-year options for discounts of up to 65%. Reserved Capacity can be shared by multiple warehouses in the same region and there are exchange and cancel options available if business needs change. Secondly, there are new RedHat Enterprise Linux Software Plans where the rules are stricter in terms of exchanging and cancelling, but discounts of up to 18% are still available.

Find the announcement and get further details here: http://bit.ly/2Mzvq1D.

Selling Azure through CSP

If you’re a partner selling Azure through CSP then you’ll be interested in a new Microsoft blog post where some upcoming changes are detailed about a new Azure experience in CSP, and the introduction of both the existing Microsoft Customer Agreement and a new Microsoft Partner Agreement in CSP. Get the full details including expected timelines here: http://bit.ly/2Ilm4l1.

Microsoft Customer Agreement

The Microsoft Customer Agreement is Microsoft’s latest agreement that gives customers a framework within which to purchase their products and services. It’s a non-expiring contract and is currently available for purchases made through the Microsoft Store for Business.

From March 2019 it’s also the agreement that customers in eligible countries can use if they want to buy Azure services through their internal Microsoft representative.

Read more about this new agreement and the new commerce experience it facilitates here: http://bit.ly/2Isb0E6 and/or check out the agreement itself (in the language of your choice) here: http://bit.ly/2TS0Anu.

Azure Cost Management

Azure Cost Management is a native Azure solution to help customers manage cloud spend. It includes tools to help track costs over the course of a month and gives a variety of ways to analyse data, as well as allowing budgetsto be set.

The Azure Cost Management tools are free and currently available to EA and Microsoft Customer Agreement customers, as well as being in public preview for customers buying through azure.com.

Future developments include expanding eligible users (CSP partners and customers) and functionality (allowing customers to manage AWS spend by the end of the second quarter of 2019).

Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2JyhqUA.

General Availability of Azure DevOps Server

Microsoft announce the General Availability of Azure DevOps Server; this is the latest version of the product you may know better by its previous name of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.

There are no changes to the licensing of this new version and you can buy Server and CAL licences through a Volume Licensing agreement.

Alternatively, Visual Studio standard subscriptions include rights to the Server licence and one User CAL, and all users licensed for Azure DevOps Services have CAL rights too.

You can find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/2FgTv7U, along with confirmation that Azure SQL Database can now be used with Azure DevOps Server in an Azure virtual machine.

Windows Virtual Desktop on Azure

Microsoft announce Windows Virtual Desktop, which will allow customers to run a full Windows 10 desktop that’s optimised for Office 365 ProPlus, delivered on Azure. Access to Windows Virtual Desktop will be included in the following User SLs: Microsoft 365 E3, E5 or F1, and Windows 10 E3 or E5, with the only additional costs being storage and compute consumption from the virtual machines themselves.

The service will be in preview soon – use this page to stay up to date: http://bit.ly/2zQJD22, and find the original announcement here: http://bit.ly/2xYfHzo.