The Common Room

Organizations might choose to deploy apps in containers rather than virtual machines so let’s take a look at the licensing of Windows Server Containers, and Microsoft define two types of containers in the Product Terms. Firstly, there’s a Windows Server Container with Hyper-V isolation which, from a licensing perspective, is considered to be a virtual operating system environment and thus follows the licensing rules for virtual machines which are covered in the previous section. Then there’s a Windows Server Container without Hyper-V isolation which is a feature of the Windows Server software itself, and thus a customer may use as…

Licenses also need to be acquired for any users who will create and manage bots. These Power Virtual Agents per User licenses are $0 licenses but do need to be ordered and then assigned to bot creators through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Page 289, BOK21

The Azure Hybrid Benefit applies to Windows Server and SQL Server and is essentially a way of being allowed to bring your own licenses to license the Windows or SQL Server software part of solutions in Azure. Page 343, BOK21

There is no notion of Software Assurance in CSP and these Server Subscriptions don’t come with SA, but they DO come with entitlements to some of the benefits that we would normally refer to as Software Assurance benefits. In particular, they entitle customers to the Azure Hybrid Benefit, Disaster Recovery rights, and to use Semi-Annual Channel releases of Windows Server. In addition, if a new version of Windows Server is released during the term of the Server Subscription, then that may be deployed in the on-premises infrastructure if required. Equally (and this isn’t, I know, an SA benefit) customers may…

Enterprise Agreement customers also have the option to acquire Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise Device SLs. In this scenario, a license is assigned to the device that will be used by many users who are not individually licensed for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. These users do not even need an Azure Active Directory account, and anyone with access to the device is able to use the Microsoft 365 Apps on that device without any user-level activation taking place. Page 180, BOK21

An Azure Subscription is a container to which Azure resources are assigned as they are created. There are different Subscription types associated with the ways that a customer buys – an Azure Subscription for CSP is different to the one for an Enterprise Agreement, for example. All of these “regular” Subscription types are used for production workloads supporting the day-to-day business of an organization. However, there’s another type of Azure Subscription which is used for dev and test purposes. The benefit for organizations is that there are discounted rates on some of the Azure services when they are assigned to…

Reservations do not automatically renew, but customers are sent notifications about upcoming Reservation expiration, and can choose to opt in to automatically renew the Reservation at any time. This will purchase a new Reservation at the relevant time rather than extending the term of an existing one. If a Reservation is not set to automatically renew then there is no interruption to the workload, it just starts being charged at regular metered prices. As soon as another Reservation is purchased it is automatically applied to the relevant workload. Page 334, BOK21

You purchase Communication Credits in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and you can add credits manually as you need them, or you can enable the Auto-recharge option which will add credit automatically when the balance falls below a threshold that you set. This is usually the preferred option, since if there is a zero-credit balance, licensed users won’t be able to dial out from meetings to PAYG countries, and users won’t be able to use the toll-free dial-in numbers to join a meeting. Payment for the Communication Credits is, for many customers, via a credit card. However, an Enterprise Agreement…