Historically, the power and flexibility of Azure was perfect for businesses who wished to spin up servers for short periods of time. For many businesses who wanted a long term solution though, the expense and unpredictability of its pricing meant that Azure was out of reach. This, however, is no longer the case. With the introduction of two discounts, Azure Virtual Servers are not just a viable long-term option, but one which cannot be overlooked.

Discounts of up to 60%

Let’s take a look at the two major discounts available, the first being Azure Reserved Instance. Typically, Azure is charged by the second on a Pay As You Go (PAYG) basis, which can seem pretty daunting. However, if your Infrastructure is long-term and stays relatively stable, you can reserve your Virtual Machines for 12 or 36 months giving you huge discounts of up to 60%.

Think of it like a mobile phone contract – if you commit to monthly payments for 12 or 36 months you get a better deal and predictable costs. However, just like a mobile phone contract, if you commit and receive the discount then you must pay for the duration of the term.

A further discount is also available on top of Azure RI called Hybrid Benefit. Hybrid Benefit was previously only available to larger businesses that had Volume Licensing bought directly from Microsoft. As Microsoft have changed how and where you can buy server licences, this discount is now available to organisations that buy their licences through Risc IT Solutions. This gives you up to 80% discount compared to PAYG.

When buying a physical server, you choose your storage based on the amount you currently need and then add on some more to allow for growth. This means that until all the storage is full (at which point your server will hardly function), you’re always paying for unused space. With Azure, this isn’t the case as you only pay for what you actually use, so the important thing is to understand what that is before you reserve you server.

So how do we go about this? What we typically do at Risc is demonstrate what the PAYG costs will be for your business for an initial period of one or two weeks. Following that, we have a proof of concept period where the allocated resources will be measured to ensure adequate performance and suitability. At the stage where everything is running perfectly and all parties are happy, we then commit to 12 or 36 months to apply the Azure RI and Hybrid Benefit discounts.

Even though you have committed to particular resources, it doesn’t mean that you have to compromise on scalability. You can scale up permanently by simply increasing your virtual server specs, and should you need a temporary addition, you can use Azure PAYG in addition to your RI.

When it comes to Azure, experience counts, and we have plenty of experience. If you’re interested in Azure Virtual Servers, please get in touch on 01492 862780 and we’ll be happy to help.