Learn more about Azure Subscription.

About Alif: Alif empowers Microsoft MSP-CSP partners to provide exceptional IT services to their clients to ensure that the partners reduce their costs and focus on their business. We provide white-labelled managed services for technologies like Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Security, Sharepoint, Power Platform, SQL, Azure Devops and a lot more. Our headquarter is in Pune, India whereas we work with over 50 partners across the globe that trust us with their client delivery.

What is an Azure Subscription ?

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An Azure subscription is a logical container used to provision resources in Azure. It holds the details of all resources like virtual machines (VMs), databases, and more. When we create an Azure resource like a VM, we identify the subscription it belongs to. As we use the VM, the usage of the VM is aggregated and billed monthly. The following boundaries can be defined with an Azure subscription: An Azure subscription is a logical container used to provision resources in Azure. It holds the details of all resources like virtual machines (VMs), databases, and more. When we create an Azure resource like a VM, we identify the subscription it belongs to. As we use the VM, the usage of the VM is aggregated and billed monthly.

The following boundaries can be defined with an Azure subscription:

• Billing boundary: The billing requirements for accessing resources are defined by this subscription type. Azure will give our each subscription its own different billing so that we can create multiple subscriptions as per our business needs.

• Access control boundary: In order to separate the subscriptions, by applying different management policies we can construct an access control border at the subscription level to represent diverse organizational structures

Azure Subscriptions Types – Microsoft offers different types of subscriptions tailored to fulfil all types of requirements.

• Free: A free subscription can be created with an email account and a credit card that includes 200$ credit for the first 30 days and free limited access for 12 months when converted to a pay-as-you-go subscription.

• Pay-As-You-Go: Generates a monthly charge depending on the amount of Cloud resources used.

• Enterprise: A single Enterprise agreement is made for bulk purchases of subscriptions, with discounts for new licenses and Software Assurance – targeted at enterprise scale – Organisations.

• CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) – Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program (CSP) enables partners to directly manage their entire Microsoft cloud customer lifecycle.

Azure Subscription hierarchy –

Buy a Azure subscription –

Customer can buy a Azure subscription in two ways - Purchase directly from Microsoft - Get the same pay-as-you-go pricing through the Azure website or through an Azure sales specialist. Purchasing direct means that you:

• Manage your Azure environment yourself—or get help from a partner.

• Receive a monthly bill.

• Have the option to choose an Azure support plan.

Enlist an Azure partner for a managed cloud solution - Work with a partner for complete, managed cloud solutions for Azure. Partners help you:

• Provision, deploy and manage Azure services.

• Customise a billing plan that meets your business needs.

• Optimise costs and get the support you need.

Azure Regions and Geographies –

• As of now, Microsoft have 60+ Azure region’s in 10 geo locations around the world.

• A Region is a grouping of data centres that together form a deployment location for workloads

• All region names are based on a general geography.

• A geography location have multiple Azure datacentres.

Azure Subscription Support Plans:-

	Developer	Standard	Professional Direct
​Best for	Non-critical workloads	Production workloads	Business-critical workloads
Reactive technical support	1 business day response	1-hour response for critical cases	1-hour response + priority tracking of critical cases
​Proactive technical support	Not applicable	Not applicable	Access to a pool of technical experts