Tracking Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server

• Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server promises substantial cost savings, but effective tracking is required to ensure license compliance and fully exploit the benefits.
• Several Azure services and tools help track Azure Hybrid Benefit usage, although the tools cannot correlate usage with the on-premises licenses owned by customers.
• Significant custom configuration and other work is typically required for tracking the use of the Azure Hybrid Benefit.

 

Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) enables customers to apply on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance (SA) to certain workloads on Azure. A separate AHB allows customers to apply some Linux OS licenses to Azure VMs. (For a discussion, see the sidebar “Tracking Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux.”)

However, it is up to customers to configure the Azure VMs where the rights from on-premises licenses are to be applied and to track AHB usage to ensure licensing compliance. Mapping licenses to Azure deployments can be further complicated when determining who owns licenses within the organization, and whether particular teams or departments use their entitled AHB rights. For example, a team could encroach on other teams’ potential rights to apply AHB by deploying more Azure VMs than its licenses permit.