Acquire, provision, and manage Azure reserved VM instances (RI) + server subscriptions for customers

Appropriate roles: Admin agent | Global admin | Helpdesk agent | Sales agent | User management admin

What are Azure Reservations?

Azure Reservations help you save money by prepaying for one-year or three-years of Azure resources, such as virtual machines, SQL Database compute capacity, and Azure Cosmos DB throughput. Prepaying allows you to get a discount on the resources you use. Reservations can significantly reduce your virtual machine, SQL database compute, Azure Cosmos DB, and other resource costs up to 72% compared to pay-as-you-go prices. Reservations provide a billing discount and don't affect the runtime state of your resources. For more information, see What are Azure Reservations?

Why should customers buy a reservation?

If customers have virtual machines, Azure Cosmos DB, or SQL databases that run for long periods of time, purchasing a reservation gives them the most cost-effective option. For example, if a customer continuously runs four instances of a service without a reservation, they're charged at pay-as-you-go rates. If they purchase a reservation for those resources, they immediately get the reservation discount. The resources are no longer charged at the pay-as-you-go rates.

Compelling New Azure offer in CSP

By bringing Azure Reservations and Server Subscriptions to its CSP program, Microsoft is better enabling its partners to address fast-growing customer demand for more cost-effective solutions to support highly predictable, persistent cloud workloads. The CSP program enables partners to acquire, provision, and manage Azure Reservations and Server Subscriptions on behalf of commercial customers via Microsoft Partner Center and Azure portal.

We even give partners in our CSP program choices about how Azure reservations can be purchased. You can buy Azure reservations on behalf of a customer, or you can allow the customer to buy their own reservations from a prior Azure subscription the partner has purchased for them.

Azure Reservations give customers the flexibility of virtualization for a wide range of computing solutions, including development and testing, running applications, and extending the data center.

With Azure Reserved VM Instances, for example, commercial customers can now save up to 72% versus pay-as-you-go Azure VM pricing simply by purchasing—or "reserving"—the virtual machine for a one-year or three-year period. Windows Server customers with Azure Hybrid Benefit, included with Software Assurance, can save up to 80% versus pay-as-you-go pricing.

With an unmatched combination of compelling pricing and unmatched deployment flexibility, customers will see the best overall value when they choose Azure Reservations.

• See Purchase Reservations on the Azure portal.

• See the Azure RI CSP Commercial Price List under the Microsoft Azure Reserved Instances category on the Price lists page in Partner Center for software subscriptions and Linux ISV annual subscriptions.

Linux ISV annual subscriptions

• SUSE Linux
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Azure Red Hat OpenShift

ISV annual subscriptions

• Azure VMware Solution by CloudSimple

Getting started

To understand how you can position Azure Reservations with your customers and get up and running operationally as quickly as possible, we recommend the following approach to review the readiness materials:

1. Review and understand the Partner Center new commerce operations guide.

2. Understand updates for Azure Reservations and Server Subscriptions in the Partner Center API.

Sales readiness

• Remote Desktop Services (RDS) Client Access License (CAL) (announcement)

• Azure Reserved VM Instances (Azure portal)

• Server Subscriptions

• SQL DB Reservations (Azure portal)

• Azure Cosmos DB (Azure portal)

• SQL Managed Instance (Azure portal)

• SUSE and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (Azure portal)

• Red Hat Linux on Azure

• SUSE Linux on Azure

• Linux on Azure

• Azure Pricing Overview

• Azure Pricing Calculator

• Azure Databricks unit reservations

Training

Register to view Commercial Licensing Readiness webinars and on-demand events. Previously recorded Licensing Readiness on-demand events include topics like:

• CSP Online Services, CSP Azure, and general licensing updates, including Azure (November 2018)

• SQL DB Reserved Capacity & Instance Size Flexibility (August 2018)

• Server Subscriptions in CSP (July 2018)

• Azure Reservations Overview in CSP (May 2018)

Operations

Partner Center new commerce operations guide: Comprehensive guide covering key policy and operational aspects such as agreements, ordering through Partner Center, invoices, price list details, incentives, reconciliation files, API, Sandbox, and Azure Partner Shared Services.

Azure Hybrid Benefit

The Azure Hybrid Benefit is a pricing benefit for customers who have licenses with Software Assurance. Azure Hybrid Benefit helps maximize the value of existing on-premises Windows Server and/or SQL Server license investments when migrating to Azure. Eligible customers can save up to 40%* on Azure Virtual Machines (infrastructure as a service, or IaaS). They can save up to 55% on Azure SQL Database (platform as a service, or PaaS) and SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines (IaaS) with Azure Hybrid Benefit, which increases to up to 80% when combined with Azure Reserved Instances.

* Actual savings can vary based on region, instance type, or usage.

Next steps

• Azure Hybrid Benefit FAQ