Azure SQL Database failover rights

Microsoft add new failover rights for Azure SQL Database to the December 2023 Product Terms. Now, when a secondary database replica is used only for disaster recovery, and doesn’t have any workloads running on it or applications connecting to it, you can save on licensing costs by designating the database as a standby replica. Microsoft provide you with the number of vCores licensed in the primary database at no extra charge, but you’re still billed for the compute and storage that the secondary database uses.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4b6kRKK, the relevant part of the Product Terms here: https://bit.ly/3Y6xsac, and instructions for configuring the standby replica here: https://bit.ly/3HxEzlc.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Guides

The Dynamics team do a great job of keeping their Licensing Guides up-to-date. Read on for the news about the changes and additions over the last few months.

November 2023 Licensing Guide

  • Removal of the 1-year licences for the Fraud Protection offerings

December 2023 Licensing Guide

  • The Field Service User SL now includes access to Dynamics 365 Guides and Remote Assist
  • The Field Service Contractor User SL is added to page 16, and you can find out more on our blog: https://bit.ly/4biwD4L

January 2024 Licensing Guide

  • The Finance Premium User SL is added to pages 18 and 19, and you can find out more on our blog: https://bit.ly/4birM3Q
  • The Operations Database capacity that is accrued for each individual Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce and Project Operations User SL is increased from 1.5 GB to 4 GB – see page 38
  • There’s a new option to purchase Dataverse / Operations Additional Database Capacity in increments of 1 TB – see page 40
  • Power Virtual Agents is replaced throughout by Copilot Studio, and you can find out more on our blog: https://bit.ly/3Uie6zq

Power Platform Licensing Guide

There’s an updated (December 2023) Power Platform Licensing Guide, with the main change being the morphing of Power Virtual Agents into Copilot Studio.

Find out more about that here: https://bit.ly/3Uie6zq, and get the updated Licensing Guide here: https://bit.ly/4968mgq.