After we discussed in our first part, how the costs in Azure are made up, we can get into the Azure Reservations.
As nice as it is that in Azure the resources are tracked via metrics and the actual costs are calculated at the end. What is the point if my resources run 24×7?
One of the advantages of the cloud is the use of dynamisms, e.g. quickly providing 20 additional systems and then switching them off again. This can be an advantage, for example, for web shops in load times or for cyclically used systems such as terminal servers (RDS hosts).
If you shut down systems overnight in the on-premises world, there is no real advantage. Hardware, licenses and monitoring systems will run and cost money. In the cloud, it’s different.
But what about systems that have to be available around the clock, such as domain controllers, databases or SAP systems?
This is exactly where the Azure Reservations come into play, because the reservations are aimed at workloads that have a long duration and can also guarantee this. In return there are discounts on the resulting costs.
Azure Reservations are a prepaid reservation of Azure resources. Resources can be obtained for a period of 1 or 3 years. In return for the reservation, and thus guaranteed payment over 1 or 3 years, you will receive a corresponding discount of up to 72%.
Reservations can be made for Azure virtual machines, SUSE software, SQL databases with vCores and Cosmos DB capacities. Only the direct resources are reserved. Dependent resources such as network, software and storage will continue to be paid pay-as-you-go.
The costs to be paid in advance for the reservation will be settled directly against the chosen means of payment. In the EA contract, the Monetary Commitment is used first. Everything that goes beyond this will be settled in the Overage invoice. Pay-as-you-Go subscriptions that are billed via credit card require an immediate charge to the credit card.
So if you have long running instances, databases or Cosmos DBs with guaranteed usage, you should consider Azure Reservations.
In the next part we take a look at the purchase of Azure Reservations
Next Part (tomorrow): ARS 3/6 – Azure Reservations Kaufen
This article is based on my current knowledge as of February 2019. 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.
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