Microsoft announce that it’s now possible to turn on the Auto-renew option for a Reservation at the time of purchase. The setting is off by default, and you can (as before) enable or disable the Auto-renew option at any time up to the expiration of the existing Reservation.
See the announcement article here: https://bit.ly/447jdWk.
There’s a Power BI dashboard available for customers who want to see the savings they’ve made in Azure by purchasing Reservations or Savings Plans. Find out more and download the Power BI file with setup instructions here: https://bit.ly/3Il5r8R.
There are lots of different ways to optimise costs in Azure, but this list is great to remind you of the basics (Reservations, Azure Hybrid Benefit etc) as well as newer options specific to running SQL in Azure, or using Azure Backup solutions.
Find the full list here: https://bit.ly/2J7pVWR.
Microsoft announce that budget evaluations in Azure Cost Management now include Reservations and Marketplace purchases rather than just usage information.
Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/2KWjqDW, some examples on how you might implement the new features here: https://bit.ly/2WgjUtO, and a tutorial on creating budgets here: https://bit.ly/2Whw8lU.
The Reservations family continues to grow with one and three years Reservations for Azure Dedicated Host available. Get the overview here: http://bit.ly/2VXbJ7b, understand how the discounts are applied here: http://bit.ly/2IMPUj3, and get pricing here: http://bit.ly/2KkxB6m.
If you want a review of Azure Dedicated Host licensing, then head over to this article on our blog: http://bit.ly/2OJ5Nwx.
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.
Microsoft update their page on Reservations and Server Subscriptions in CSP to reveal that there will be two new offerings available in the short term: Reservations for SQL Managed Instance, and Server Subscriptions for RDS CALs.
Find the page and its host of useful resources here: http://bit.ly/2NIC5n1.
Azure Reservations are a way of pre-paying for an Azure resource over a one or three-year term to get the most cost-effective pricing. The Reservations family continues to grow: it started with Reserved Instances, a way of pre-paying for Azure virtual machine base compute, and was extended with Reserved Capacity, a way of pre-paying for Azure SQL Database compute capacity. Today the family also includes Software Reservations for SUSE Linux software, and Reserved Capacity for Azure Cosmos DB throughput.
This page (http://bit.ly/2Q3vm7J) gives you an overview of Reservations and if you expand the “Buy a reservation” link at the left you can get details on the current four members of the Reservations family.
You can buy an Azure Reservation to save money on the infrastructure charges (compute) for virtual machines or Azure SQL Databases. After purchase you can make adjustments to that reservation: change the Subscription it applies to, split a single reservation into two reservations, add or change users who can manage a reservation, and optimise for VM size flexibility or capacity priority.
Find a useful article with instructions here: http://bit.ly/2PnMOUC.