Buy Microsoft Azure reservations on behalf of your customers

  • Article

Appropriate roles: Admin agent | Sales agent

This article explains how to buy Azure reservations on behalf of your customers in Partner Center. It also identifies markets where Azure reservations are unavailable.

  • This article applies only to partners in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program.
  • Customers using other types of subscriptions—such as, pay-as-you-go, individual, Microsoft Customer Agreement, or Enterprise Agreement subscriptions)—should read Save with Azure reservations instead.

Before you begin

Important

Review the following information before you buy Azure reservations on behalf of your customers.

  • Azure reservations aren't available in all markets. To see a list of unavailable markets, see Azure reservations—unavailable markets at the end of this article.

  • If you want customers to be able to buy their own Azure reservations from a prior Azure subscription you purchased for them, see Give customers permission to buy their own Azure reservations.

  • If your customer has signed the Microsoft Customer Agreement, you must purchase Azure reservations under the Azure plan.

  • Customers must already have an active Azure subscription before you can purchase reservations on their behalf

  • Software subscription costs (such as SQL Database or SUSE Linux software) aren't included in Azure reservation prices

  • Commercial pricing from Microsoft to you doesn't include taxes (unless your location is Brazil, where the commercial price to you does include taxes).

  • Sales agents and Help Desk agents need explicit access to the Azure subscription to:

    • Buy or manage a subscription in the Azure portal on behalf of the customer.
    • Make exchanges and refunds on behalf of the customer.
    • File support requests on behalf of the customer.

  • If you're an indirect provider and you buy Azure reservations through the Azure portal, the Partner of Record (indirect reseller) is inherited from the Azure CSP subscription that you select.

  • The Partner of Record for Azure reservations can't be changed post-purchase. You can cancel the existing reservation and purchase a new one with the new Partner of Record.

  • If a customer wants to transfer an Azure subscription from Direct or EA to CSP, reservations don't get transferred.

Purchase Azure reservations

Note

If you want customers to be able to buy their own Azure reservations from a prior Azure subscription you purchased for them, see Give customers permission to buy their own Azure reservations.

To buy Microsoft Azure reservations on behalf of your customers in Partner Center, use the following steps:

  1. Sign in to Partner Center and select Customers.

  2. On the Customers page, find the customer who wants to purchase Azure reservations and then select the down arrow to expand that customer's row.

  3. Select Add products and then select Azure.

    a. Choose the customer's market segment from the Segment list.

    b. Choose Reservations from the product Type list.

    c. Choose the type of reservation the customer wants from the Reservations type list.

  4. Choose the customer's subscription you want to add Azure reservations to from the Customer subscription list.

    Important

    Azure reservations must be associated with an active Azure subscription. If the customer doesn't already have an active Azure subscription, you can select Azure to add one.

  5. Use the filters to find Azure reservations on virtual machines that meet your customer's requirements.

  6. After you find the reservations you want to buy, enter the number of reserved instances the customer needs in Quantity and then select Add to cart.

  7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you've added all the necessary items to the order and then select Review to verify that your order is correct.

    On the Review your orders page, you can:

    • Verify or change the reserved instances quantity.

    • Select the reservation's scope. The reservation's scope can cover one subscription or multiple subscriptions (shared scope).

      • If you scope the reservation to a single subscription, the reservation discount is applied to that subscription only.
      • If you select Shared, the reservation discount is applied to any subscriptions within the customer's billing context.

      Note

      If you opt to limit the reservation's scope to a single Azure subscription, you might need to increase the subscription's vCPU quota. To increase the subscription's vCPU quota, create a support request in the Azure portal by following the instructions at Increase regional vCPU quotas.

      Note

      If your customer is under the Azure plan, Scope is set to Shared at time of purchase. That scope can be changed later.

    • If you're a provider partner, select the reseller that you want to associate with the product.

    • If your Azure reservation does support the Billing plan option, you can select monthly billing from the dropdown menu.

    • If your Azure reservation doesn't support the Billing plan option, billing frequency defaults to one-time billing.

  8. Select Buy to purchase the order.

    The details of your order, including your order number, are displayed on the Confirm page.

  9. Select Done to go to your Order history page.

  10. To manage the customer's reservation in the Azure portal, find the customer on your Customers page and then select the down arrow to expand the customer's row. Select Microsoft Azure Management Portal to open the customer's record in the Azure portal.

Azure reservations—unavailable markets

Important

Azure reservations are not available in the following markets:

Unavailable markets (in alphabetical order)

A to Gi Gr to Pal Pap to Z
Åland Islands Greenland Papua New Guinea
American Samoa Grenada Pitcairn Islands
Andorra Guadeloupe Reunion
Anguilla Guam Saba
Antarctica Guernsey Saint Barthélemy
Antigua and Barbuda Guinea Saint Lucia
Aruba Guinea-Bissau Saint Martin
Azerbaijan Guyana Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Benin Haiti Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Bhutan Heard Island and McDonald Islands Samoa
Bonaire Isle of Man San Marino
Bouvet Island Jan Mayen São Tomé and Príncipe
British Indian Ocean Territory Jersey Seychelles
British Virgin Islands Kiribati Sierra Leone
Burkina Faso Kosovo Sint Eustatius
Burundi Laos Sint Maarten
Cambodia Lesotho Solomon Islands
Central African Republic Liberia Somalia
Chad Madagascar South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands
China Malawi South Sudan
Christmas Island Maldives St Helena, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha
Cocos (Keeling) Islands Mali Suriname
Comoros Marshall Islands Svalbard
Congo Martinique Swaziland
Congo (DRC) Mauritania Timor-Leste
Cook Islands Mayotte Togo
Djibouti Micronesia Tokelau
Dominica Montserrat Tonga
Equatorial Guinea Mozambique Turks and Caicos Islands
Eritrea Myanmar Tuvalu
Falkland Islands Nauru U.S. Outlying Islands
French Guiana New Caledonia Vanuatu
French Polynesia Niger Vatican City
French Southern Territories Niue Wallis and Futuna
Gabon Norfolk Island Yemen
Gambia Northern Mariana Islands
Gibraltar Palau

Next steps

For information about: Read this:
Azure reservations in CSP Sell Microsoft Azure Reserved Instances
Managing Azure reservations in Partner Center Managing Azure reservations in Partner Center
Determine the correct VM size and verify customer VM usage VM sizing for maximum Azure reservation usage
Purchasing Azure reservations using the Partner Center API Purchase Azure Reserved VM Instances in the Partner Center developer documentation
Giving customers permission to buy their own Azure reservations Give customers permission to buy their own Azure reservations