Taking advantage of Azure Hybrid Benefit
We’re continuing our series on getting the most out of Microsoft Azure. For this blog, we will focus on Azure Hybrid Benefit, a way to save money on licenses.
The Azure cloud platform is made up of more than 200 products and cloud services, where companies can “build, run, and manage applications across multiple clouds, on-premises, and at the edge, with the tools and frameworks of your choice.” The small and midsize businesses (SMB) we work with are at various stages of their digital transformation. Some companies are able to migrate all of their systems to the cloud while others need a hybrid environment, keeping some servers and systems on-premises for a variety of reasons, including regulatory requirements.
Azure provides a multi-layered approach to security and eliminates up-front hardware costs and license complexity, which is why we recommend it for cloud solutions. The last thing we want our clients to do is pay double for cloud and on-prem licenses during migration. Azure Hybrid Benefit offers licensing options to drastically reduce the costs of running systems in the cloud.
The Azure Hybrid Benefit can be centrally managed in the Azure portal. It helps reduce risk by offering 180 days to run Azure and on-premises workloads concurrently at no additional cost. SMBs can also keep both licenses permanently to continue running a hybrid infrastructure.
What types of licenses?
Windows Server or SQL Server on-premises workloads migrations: Use your existing licenses covered by Software Assurance (SA) or other subscriptions in Azure. This can save you up to 85 percent compared to pay-as-you-go pricing. When you move these workloads to Azure, extended security updates provide three years of free updates after the end of support, reducing risk and cost.
Active and unused on-premises Red Hat or SUSE Linux subscriptions: Use your existing Linux workloads on Azure and pay only for your virtual machine infrastructure costs.
Your actual savings may vary, so there’s an Azure Hybrid Benefit Savings Calculator that can be used to estimate potential savings. Azure Hybrid Benefit also offers unlimited virtualization for dedicated hosts.
