Evaluate Azure Stack HCI for testing and learning purpose

Question

I try to evaluate Azure Stack HCI for testing and learning purpose only.
As I read an article, the 60 days trial period will be started when we register the cluster to Azure.

How will be billed if I removed the resources on Azure on 50th days?
If I evaluate the Azure Stack HCI on nested virtual environment such as Hyper-V or VMware, how will be billed when I change the from 8 vCPU cores to 4 vCPU cores on 40th days?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Hi @KA SAN CHAN ,

Billing records are generated and uploaded to Azure twice per day, and the charges only start based on the configuration after the 60-day trial is over. If the configuration changes, this would be reflected in the billing records accordingly. If you are only evaluating HCI for testing, it would be best to opt your servers into the preview channel. This will allow you to continue using HCI without worrying about billing, however, know that this is ONLY for testing purposes. You cannot use preview builds in ANY production scenario (this is also true for running HCI in virtualized environments - testing only). Also, once you have opted into the preview channel, you are not able to opt out without reloading.

More information on the preview channel can be found here - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/hci/manage/preview-channel

Hope this helps!
Trent

Answer 2

Thank you for your information.
If I opt-in the Azure Stack HCI cluster into the Preview Channel, does it mean will not bill for Azure Stack HCI core monthly fee with but will bill for other resource consumption such as Azure storage, AKS, VM, outbound traffic, etc?
Thanks.