Azure Stack HCI - problem with subscription and Status

Hi Aleksander,

With Azure Hybrid Benefit being enabled on your subscription, you have essentially traded the equivalent core licenses of Software Assurance-enabled Windows Server Datacenter for the physical cores of your Azure Stack HCI cluster. What this means is that you are using your Software Assurance in place of the normal billing. As such, you will not be billed for the Azure Stack HCI cluster, so the 'free trial' is essentially moot.

More information on Azure Hybrid Benefit can be found in our docs - https://video2.skills-academy.com/en-us/azure-stack/hci/concepts/azure-hybrid-benefit-hci?tabs=azure-portal.

Hope this helps!

I understand that if I chose to use the license (Azure hybrid benefit) I will not have any (monthly) fees in connection with having a registered HCI cluster in Azure? I would like to understand it well ;) Because from what I've seen, we either register Windows Srv 2022 +SA with onpremis keys or the second option we pay according to the Azure price list. Can my company obtain additional licenses (subscriptions) for regular Azure for lab purposes? because MSDN licenses are lousy, they are $100-150

Hi Aleksander,

Let me start off by saying I am not a licensing expert. But what I do know is that to enable Azure Hybrid Benefit, first you must have a valid Software Assurance agreement. Then, by activating Azure Hybrid Benefit, you are agreeing to reserve the equivalent number of SA core licenses for the cores within your Azure Stack HCI cluster. In doing so, you cannot use those SA core licenses for any other purpose and you will not be billed for the cores within your Azure Stack HCI cluster.

As a very simple example, assume you had a 4-node cluster and each cluster node had 32 processor cores. With Azure Hybrid Benefit, you would reserve 128 SA core licenses to cover the 128 cores in your Azure Stack HCI cluster. In return, you would not incur the core charges for that cluster. Without Azure Hybrid Benefit, you would be charged at a rate equivalent to $10USD/core/month. Note that Azure Stack HCI clusters upload billing information to Azure twice per day, so your bill will reflect the daily charges which average right at $0.3333USD/core/day. So for a 128-core cluster, you would be billed approximately $42.66USD/day or $1280USD/month. More pricing details (including different currency rates) can be found here - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/azure-stack/hci/.

Note that other services/features that are added to the cluster may incur charges, so be sure to review the terms for each additional service before adding it to the cluster. An example of this is AKS. (As a side note, Azure Hybrid Benefit is also available for AKS - https://video2.skills-academy.com/en-us/azure/aks/hybrid/azure-hybrid-benefit?tabs=powershell).

As for the subscriptions, there are several options available. You can use our pricing calculator (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/) to get an estimate based on your needs. However, I would recommend that you reach out to our Sales team or even one of our partners so they can help ensure you get the right option.

Hope this helps!