Activating the Azure Plan Reservations

Owned by Panagiotis Papanastasiou
Last updated: Feb 25, 2021
6 min read

The Azure Plan Reservations are managed by the same service manager we have implemented for the rest of 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 "Azure Plan Reserved Instances" 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 Plan Reservations.


Azure Plan Reserved Instances Product Type

This product type has a list of 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
    • for Cosmos DB RIs: Cosmos_DB_5_Million_RUs, 3Years
  • Scope: The scope of the purchased RI: it can be only 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.
  • Foreign Exchange Rates (Hidden): This is the Microsoft's foreign exchange rates that are stored in our systems and are directly related to the calculation of the "Pricing Currency" if it differs from the "Original Unit Price" of Microsoft which is in USD.
  • Foreign Exchange Rate Date (Hidden): This is the Microsoft's foreign exchange rate publish date. It is directly related to the "Foreign Exchange Rates" property. 
  • Pricing Currency (Hidden): This is the Microsoft's unit price in USD wich is converted to the customer's BSS account base currency via the use of Microsoft's foreign exchange rates.
  • Original Unit Price (Hidden): This is the Microsoft's actual unit price in USD.

  • 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. The last four "Hidden Properties" are used by our systems for the pricing and billing calculations, however, the three fields (Foreign Exchange Rates, Foreign Exchange Rate Date, and Pricing Currency) can be chosen and viewed inside a report.

Azure Plan Reserved Instances Product

This is a container product that will be used in the ordering process of an Azure Plan Reserved Instance.

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 Azure Plan RI purchase and not a subscription record. The Azure Plan pricing for Reservations and FX rates is automatically retrieved through an API call to Microsoft, called the Pricing API. Therefore, that API updates automatically as well as in real-time the Azure Plan RI price list and FX rates, and NOT manually through an import tool as was the case for RIs for legacy Azure. In general, the pricing options for this product are much simpler than the rest of 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 "Azure Plan Reserved Instances" 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 "Pricing API". 
  • Do not alter the Sell Price and the Purchase Price here (leave them as zero [0]) since these prices are added automatically by the "Pricing API". You can only alter your Markup with which you invoice your resellers and your customers, by following the instructions explained in Billing an Azure Plan Reservation.
  • The "Available Currencies" can be altered and new ones can be added.
  • 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 for Azure Plans. The RIs will be available for ordering for any customer that has one active Azure Plan subscription and the purchase process will be initiated from the available action in Azure Plan 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 price list.



Azure Plan Reserved Instances Asset Custom Fields

When your reseller or customer will purchase an Azure Plan 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 the IDs that Microsoft generates for this purchase as well as order. For keeping these values the "Get Services Definition" action will create also some asset custom fields that will be used only for the Azure Plan Reserved Instances assets. The definition of these fields can be found in BSS > Setup > Billing > Assets > Custom Fields.

Azure Plan Reserved Instances Unit

For the Azure Plan 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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