Centrally Managed Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server

Centrally managed Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) for SQL Server is a feature that allows customers to configure AHB for SQL Server–based resources at the Azure subscription or billing account scope levels. The feature automatically configures SQL Server resources across the chosen scope to receive the AHB discount, but it relies on customers accurately entering the number of SQL Server on-premises licenses they own.

Customers enter the number of owned SQL Server Standard and Enterprise Edition core licenses with Software Assurance (SA) that are not being used for on-premises workloads (here, the values 200 and 100 were entered). These licenses are eligible for the AHB to significantly reduce the costs of Azure SQL Server resources.

The UI calculates the number of normalized core licenses by adding the number of Standard edition core licenses to four times the number of Enterprise edition core licenses (here, the value 600 was calculated).

The “Based on detectable usage” text indicates the number of normalized core licenses required to use AHB with the SQL Server resources that have been individually configured for AHB (here, 400) and the number of normalized core licenses required to use AHB with all deployed SQL Server resources (here, 500).