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The Azure Reservations are managed by the same service manager we have implemented for the rest Microsoft cloud services. So, you must run the Updating the Microsoft Cloud Services Catalogue process for activating the Azure Reservations in your BSS. This process will create the Reserved Instance product type, a single product that will be used for the ordering process and any other configurations setting necessary for the management of the Azure Reservations.

Microsoft Azure Reserved Instances Product Type

This product type has a list or properties that are used for keeping in the asset record the details of reserved instance the customer will select using the ordering wizard we have implemented.

  • Product ID: This information will be retrieved based on the SKU that the user is going to select to purchase and the availability that we are going to get from Microsoft. 
  • Product Title: This will represent the MS SKU title, for example "Reserved VM Instance, Standard_NC6s_v3, AP Southeast, 1 Year". Its value will be retrieved based on the MS SKU that the user selects. 
  • Product Details: This will represent the MS SKU product attributes. Some examples:
    • for VM RIs: Standard_B1s, General purpose, US West 2, 1 Cores, 1 GB RAM, 1Year
    • for SQL DI RIs: SQLDB_BC_Compute_Gen5, AU Central 2, 3Years
  • Scope: The scope of the purchased RI: it can be single or shared.
  • Subscription: This characteristic will be filled in with the BSS subscription ID for which the reservation has been purchased. 
  • Purchase Date (UTC): The date (based on the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)) which will be stored in the asset record that will be created and provisioned during the asset's purchase.
  • *Billing Frequency: The frequency on which the billing will be based on, either One-Time or Monthly. 

These characteristics have been defined as order characteristics, but your customers will not be asked to fill them during the ordering process. There will be an ordering wizard that your resellers and customers will use and we will collect this information based on their selections.

Microsoft Azure Reserved Instances Product

This is a container product that will be used in the ordering process. This product will be related with the Reserved instances excel that you will upload via the Reserved Instance Prices Importer.

Product Pricing  

This product is not like the rest Microsoft recurring products, this is an asset product that is billed either once or monthly and the system will create an asset record for each RI purchase and not a subscription record. The pricing options for this product are much simpler than the rest Microsoft products since we have omitted all the pricing options that are available for the recurring products (e.g. upfront billing, billing date, free period etc). For the Reserved Instance product:

  • It has only one available unit, the instance unit.
  • You can define multiple currencies and their prices but not manually. The pricing is handled via the Reserved Instances Prices Importer. 
  • Do not alter the Sell Price and the Purchase Price here (leave them as zero [0]) since these prices are added automatically during the uploaded excel  as explained by the first bullet point (Reserved Instances Prices Importer). You can only alter your Markup with which you invoice your resellers and your customers, by following the instructions explained in Billing an Azure Reservation.
  • The "Available Currencies" should also not be altered.
  • You can enable the "Billing Frequency" option through the highlighted checkbox.



Storefront Settings

Although this product will not be published in your Storefront with the way you do it for the rest Microsoft products, you still need to enable the option "Publish to Storefront" for your resellers and customers to be able to purchase reserved instances. The RIs will be available for ordering for any customer that has at least one active Azure subscription and the purchase process will be initiated from the available action in Azure subscription details page.

But for the "Buy a Reservation" option to be available, you need to:

  • Enable the option "Publish to Storefront"
  • Enable the option "Available for Ordering"
  • Use the option "Available via Price List", if you want the product to be available only to resellers and customers that have it in their pricelist.


Reserved Instances Asset Custom Fields

When your reseller or customer will purchase an Azure Reserved Instance, our platform will create an asset record for keeping the details of the purchase. This asset will have the product type characteristics but we need also the expiration date of the Reserved instance (1 or 3 years) and ID Microsoft generates for this purchases. For keeping these two values the "Get Services Definition" action will create also two asset custom fields that will be used only for the Reserved Instances assets. The definition of these fields can be found in BSS > Setup > Billing > Assets > Custom Fields.

Reserved Instances Unit

For the Reserved Instances purchases, we are going to use a new unit called "Instances". This unit belongs to the "Recurring Charge" unit group and it will be used for defining the unit of the invoice items that are for the Reserved instances. This new unit is created from the "Get Services Definition" action.



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