[DEEP] Azure Reservations – Change, Exchange, Refund

Reservations – Everything goes according to plan?!

It happens from time to time that something is wrong. The planned project does not need so many servers. The solution is used much more and the database needs more performance.

Anyway…it can happen that reservations have to be adjusted or even have to be cancelled completely.

When doing this it is important to understand the difference between Changes, Exchanges and Refunds.

Change reservations

Changes can made to some reservation at any time without causing a new commercial transaction. Therefor a change will never modify the end date of a reservation.
The possible changes are limited by the type of reservation:

• Reserved Virtual Machine Instance – Scope, Instance Size Flexibility, Ownership
• Azure Databricks – scope and ownership
• Azure Data Explorer – Scope

If you want to change a VM reservation to support premium SSDs than this can also be done via the Exchange operation. In this case the period of the reservation does not start from scratch.

Maybe other changes are possible, but these are the official documented ones…

Exchange of reservations

If you want to change the region, size, quantity or term of a reservation, this is done via an Exchange. It is only possible to exchange with a reservation of the same type.
If a larger reservation is required, only the difference to the new reservation must be paid. The reservation period starts again with the exchange. Only reservations with the same or higher level can be exchanged. A „downgrade“ is not possible.

There are no costs or fees for changing a reservation as long as you stick to the rules. You even can exchange reservations that were made under an old EA after the renewal. Also there is no annual limit for exchanges.

The exchange of a SUSE Linux or RedHat Plan reservation is not possible! Also for Azure Databricks reservation no exchanges are allowed!

Refund of reservations

Basically it is also possible to „return“ a reservation and cancel it. However, there are three important things to keep in mind.

On the one hand, Microsoft reserves the right to charge a 12% „Cancellation Fee“. So a penalty for early termination of the reservation.

In addition, a maximum of $50,000 refund is possible per year. So it is not advisable to make more than $50,000 reservations that are not safely used.

The refund always refers to the remaining value of the reservation. Therefor Microsoft uses the lowest price of either your purchase price or the current price of the reservation.

The refund of a SUSE Linux or RedHat Plan reservation is not possible! Also for Azure Databricks reservation no refunds are allowed!

Disclaimer

This article is based on my current knowledge as of January 2020. All information is subject to change without notice…especially as the rules of the game may change at any time and there is a possibility that I have misunderstood or overlooked something … If this is the case, I would be happy if you add it to the comments.