Reserved Instances and Azure Hybrid Benefit

There are two major vehicles for reducing cost and optimizing your Azure spend for infrastructure services.

Reserved Instances

Reserved Instances (RIs) enable a customer to guarantee that they will use a certain amount of a certain series of vCPU over a 1-year or 3-year period for a significant cost saving. A 3-year RI offers a bigger discount than a 1-year RI and is not available on all SKUs of VMs. Details on RIs, including a FAQ section, can be found at:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/reserved-vm-instances/

So, why do this? Well, it helps Microsoft plan capacity. If a customer has an RI for a series of vCPU in a region with a 3-year commit, that’s 3 years worth of capacity they know will be used. As the customer, you get a good discount. It is important to buy the right amount, as any you are not using 24/7 will still be billed. As an organization, you would work out the minimum of a certain vCPU series that will ever...