Reserved Instances

Reserved instances are a relatively new concept in Azure where you can commit to a 1-year or 3-year term for a virtual machine. By doing so, the price of the virtual machine is heavily discounted (up to 50%). virtual machines that are consistently up for long periods of time are prime candidates for reserved instances.

Reserved Instances are created for a specific virtual machine size and region. A reservation cannot span multiple regions or multiple sizes.

Reserved Instances are not available for MSDN dev/test subscriptions and may not available for all virtual machine sizes and regions (ex: A-series and G-series are not eligible).

For additional information, refer to Microsoft's documentation article: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/billing/billing-understand-vm-reservation-charges

Note: Reserved instances use a different permissions model than regular subscriptions. By default, only the user that has created the reservation will be able to see it. As such, it is possible that ShareGate Overcast recommendations may not 100% represent the actual state of your Azure subscription. The best way to ensure that you can see all reservations is to add the user as Reader to the root management group of your tenant.

To be considered a candidate, a Virtual Machine must fill the following criteria:

• Have 70% or more uptime over the past 3 months;
• Be in a region and of a size that is supported by Reserved Instances.

How to apply the recommendation

1. Click View in Portal to open the Azure Portal.
2. Click Add on the top menu.
   
3. Configure the settings for the reservation. Shared reservations can be used across multiple subscriptions. Alternatively, you can limit the reservation to a single subscription. Reservations must specify region and virtual machine size.
   
4. Virtual machine usage will automatically deduct from Reserved Instances within the scope. There is no more action needed on your part.