Questions on Azure Hybrid Benefits for Linux

Question

Hello,

Could you please consider answering following questions?

1. We checked and found Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHUB) was not enabled for 500+ VMs (OS: Windows and Linux), still Azure Advisor didn't recommend to enable AHUB. Any idea why it could happen?
2. We can get OS info of VMs using Azure Portal but not getting which flavor of OS is running on VMs. If we go to VM overview, we are getting info of both OS and flavor i.e. Linux (sles 15.4) - How can we get OS and flavor info for all VMs in our estate?
3. How do we calculate the cost saving arising out of enabling AHUB on Linux VMs?
4. Are there any corner cases where a LInux VM with SUSE or RedHat would not charged License fee by Azure even though AHUB is not enabled on that Linux VM? Appreciate your response. Thank you.

Answer 1

1.Azure Advisor provides recommendations based on best practices and cost optimization guidelines, but it may not always recommend enabling Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHUB) for Windows and Linux VMs, even if it's potentially cost-effective. There could be multiple reason for advisor not to recommend like: usage pattern, scenario like owning license via software assurance where AHUB would be best choice, custom configurations and so on.

We recommend you to engage Azure billing support team using following link - create azure billing free support ticket to have a deeper look at this.

2. You can try this Az CLI command to get this info: az vm list --query "[].{Name:name, OS:storageProfile.osDisk.osType, Flavor:storageProfile.imageReference.sku}"
3. To calculate the AHUB savings, you can use the following formula:

AHUB Savings = (Current VM Cost - VM Cost with AHUB)

Current VM Cost is the cost of running the VM without AHUB.

VM Cost with AHUB is the cost of running the VM with AHUB.

This information can be gathered from Azure Pricing Calculator or by adjusting the VM pricing based on the AHUB benefit.

4. For any services in production environment cost for license is applied. In case if you have existing for specific distribution like (e.g., Red Hat Enterprise Linux) with support or subscription agreements, you can often use those licenses in Azure (sometimes referred to as "Bring Your Own License" or BYOL). Anywhere else license cost might be incurred.

For more detailed assistance with your environment, please use the doc link included in 1st answer to engage azure billing support team.

Regards,

Karthik Srinivas