Bring Your Own License to Microsoft Azure
While you might think most people are quite aware by now that you can optimize your Azure costs by bringing your own license (BYOL), we still receive many questions about it. Additionally, in our optimization projects, we have found that organizations either do not apply this strategy or do not use it to its full potential.
This is probably the easiest way to optimize your Azure costs.
In this blog, we will explain how to analyze your current data and what savings you can achieve, as well as how to achieve them.
Analyze your potential
To analyze your current potential, you don’t need expensive and fancy tooling. You can easily make an export out of Azure to analyze were and where you didn’t apply yet the BYOL strategy.
Login to https://portal.azure.com
- To run the report the user need an account with Reader, Contributor or Owner rights.
Click on “Virtual Machines” you’ll find that on the left side in the Azure portal.
Select “Open Directory including Subscription settings” right under the “+ Add” button
- Please select “All subscriptions” on the Global subscription filter.
- Open Directory including Subscription settings
Please add the following data points for your export, Azure Hybrid Benefit, Size and Operating System.
You should know find those data points on the rights side. If so, please click on apply.
You’re now ready to download the file as CSV.
License rules
Bring Your Own License to Azure is available for Windows Server and SQL Server. Essentially, the licensing rules are the same as for your on-premises estate.
Windows Server
Windows Server in Azure is licensed per core, including Software Assurance (SA). Except for a dedicated cluster, Windows Server is licensed by the Virtual Machine (VM) instead of the underlying hardware. The minimum requirement per VM is 8 cores, and you need to have SA. Licenses come in core packages of 2 or 16. We advise always using a 2-core pack to simplify your license management.
The next step is to choose between Datacenter or Standard edition. With the Datacenter edition, you can license both your on-premises estate and your Azure environment with the same license. In Microsoft’s words, you have “double use rights.”
This means if you have an on-premises estate with 6 hosts, each with 2 CPUs and 8 cores, you should own 96 cores (48 licenses). You can use those 96 cores simultaneously for your on-premises estate and in Azure. With 96 cores available and a minimum requirement of 8 cores per VM, you can license up to 12 virtual machines, each with a maximum of 8 cores.
In the Azure calculator, you can find the actual cost of the license in Azure, or better said, your potential savings. For example, when selecting a DS4 v2 machine, the license cost for Windows Server is $268.64 per month.
That’s a $3,223.68 annual saving for just one VM!
When you have utilized all your Datacenter licenses, you should analyze the cost of applying the Standard edition to all your other VMs. In this case, it’s not always a cost saving. For example, if you have a 2-core machine, the license cost from Azure may be more cost-effective than bringing your own license.
This also means it will become a bit more complicated to define your savings, but it’s still manageable.
Compare the cost of a Windows Server 2-Core license multiplied by 4 to license 8 cores against the license cost in Azure.
