Understanding different subscription models

In general, depending on the option selected, the outcome will be a little bit different:

• If your choice was PAYG, a subscription is created immediately after your credit/debit card is validated. You can start work with it without any limits. By performing the steps from the PAYG section, you have connected your credit/debit card with an Azure subscription. This means that any resource that you provide from now will result in your card being charged the appropriate cost. On the other hand, your subscription has no spending limit by default—take that into account when deploying complex infrastructures containing multiple virtual machines and databases.
• If you have selected an EA, you will have to contact Microsoft and agree on specific agreement requirements and assumptions. Once you both agree on the common terms, a subscription will be created and you will able to manage it and extra subscriptions under it.
• If you decided to cooperate with a CSP, you will have to wait for an answer and then come to an agreement on payments, technical support, and your requirements. Once it is established, your CSP is your first line of support and direct contact when considering Azure. The most important thing is to select a proper provider by carefully reading their offer, which is described in step 3 of the CSP section.

For a PAYG subscription, three sections need to be filled:

• Payment Information: As mentioned earlier, you need a credit or debit card to obtain a PAYG subscription. You will have to fill in information here such as the card number, the name on the card, and your address.
• Add technical support: Optionally, you can select a support service for your subscription. While this may be obsolete for a Dev/Test subscription, I strongly advise you to buy a support plan for your production subscriptions. There are three different options available: Getting started, Production, and Business-critical. They all are different in many aspects (such as support availability or response time) and, of course, give you a different level of confidence. 

Note that if you are covered by Microsoft Premier support, you do not have to buy a support plan here as your subscription will be covered by it.

• Agreement: This includes your agreements to subscription, offer details, and privacy statement.

Remember that an empty subscription is free of charge. As long as you do not have resources provisioned (or you have provisioned only free ones), your card will not be charged.

An Enterprise Agreement is quite different as you have three different kinds of enrollments:

• Enterprise Enrollment: This is designed for purchasing end user technologies on a per-user, per-device, or hybrid basis.

• Server and Cloud Enrollment: You can receive better pricing and cloud-optimized licensing options by committing to one or more cloud technologies from Microsoft.

• Subscription Enrollment: This allows you to subscribe to Microsoft product licenses.

As we are talking about Azure administration, the most interesting option for you will be Server and Cloud Enrollment (SCE). There are four different SCE components:

• Core Infrastructure: It includes products such as Windows Server and the requirement of Core Infrastructure Suite (CIS) coverage for all of them.

• Application Platform: It offers SQL Server with the requirement of Full Software Assurance coverage.

• Developer Platform: It contains Visual Studio Enterprise and MSDN platforms with the requirement of Full Software Assurance coverage.

• Microsoft Azure: This includes all Microsoft Azure services.

Depending on the selected option, you will have different requirements to fulfill—this is why EA is designed for bigger companies that nonetheless require hundreds of licenses and manage hundreds of subscriptions.

It is impossible to cover all EA aspects in such a short section. If you are searching for the most flexible and advanced Azure offer for your company, take a look at the links available in the Further reading section to get the full picture.

Once you have your subscription, you can start managing it—setting up policies for resources, monitoring expenses, and managing access. This chapter will show you multiple ideas regarding administering subscriptions and what falls under them, so you can focus on getting the most from your subscription instead of fighting with unclear documentation and settings.

Besides the business subscriptions presented in this chapter, you may have access to slightly different subscription types:

• Visual Studio subscriptions: If you are a .NET platform developer, you may already have access to Azure by leveraging your free grant offered as a part of the Visual Studio subscription. Depending on the level, you may have from 50 USD to 150 USD per month to spend on Azure services.
• Microsoft sponsorship subscriptions: Some subscriptions are sponsored by Microsoft itself. This includes agreements on delivering proofs-of-concept of technologies, academic use, or specific individuals such as MVPs, who use those for training and various projects.

When you have your subscription ready, you can proceed to the next sections of this chapter. The next one will describe in detail how you can implement various policies, which can help to manage your account on a subscription level.