Azure VMs: Pricing, Licensing & Features

Azure storage and VM volumes provide the incredibly useful platform many businesses choose today for cloud solutions. Highly available, well-maintained and adaptable – all with cost in mind, Azure makes VM infrastructures easier than ever to improve business profitability with lower overhead. Azure VM servers can be brought online in minutes and configured for maximum business growth. Here’s why businesses look to Azure’s platform for VM infrastructure:

1. OS Flexibility

Operating systems are chosen with business need in mind. No longer do many businesses operate a single operating system on their servers. With VM servers now a staple of IT environments, Azure’s flexible OS offerings make implementation of variable VM infrastructures easier than ever to accomplish. Azure VMs now support more than Windows Server, including Linux, IBM, Oracle, SQL Server, and SAP. Extending data center effectiveness is a breeze with all the choices available from Azure VMs making virtualization an unequaled IT investment for many business organizations.

2. Resource Scalability

All businesses are concerned with the cost of IT hardware. Scaling hardware can be difficult with budget constraints, especially with costly servers. Starting new projects and implementations can be challenging due to high costs. Arrival of high-end equipment can delay IT progress even further, let alone damaged shipments

With Azure VMs, scalability creates a nimbler business model. Servers can be put into production in minutes rather than weeks, so development teams can complete requirements of testing and staging of new applications without delays from hardware.

With a few developed image templates, even large projects can be underway in far less time than it takes to order, deliver and rack servers Scaling is fast and efficient while adhering to organizational goals and policies.

3. Flexible VM Pricing

Azure pricing is based on subscriptions which can be adjusted at need. No longer do companies need to waste time counting total cost with licenses or specialized equipment. Azure VMs are cost-efficient and easily maintained, reducing cost of ownership far below that of physical servers.

Based on subscription need, the number of Azure VMs can easily be increased or decreased. A temporary need for additional VMs no longer requires years of financial commitment due to asset life-cycle. A temporary VM can be created and removed without the long-term consequences that physical servers require, especially when considering the cost of support. This reality is especially important when special application requirements call for faster, more powerful computing resources. The cost of the server is no longer spread out over five years but, instead, costs only for what the business needs for a specific time, meaning a drastic savings for companies and their IT commitments.

Using Reserved Instances for VM in Azure can also reduce cost further. While these reserved instances require some commitment, they can be canceled or shifted as needed, unlike physical servers which are assets that stay on financial books for years and can only be disposed of at a loss. Reserved instances create virtual assets that can be shifted and changed as needed at costs that are even lower than pay-as-you-go plans. Combined with scalability and operating system flexibility, Azure VMs completely change the foundation of a company’s IT resources.

4. Reduction in Overhead & Costs

IT organizations no longer need a commitment to larger employee support staffing. Budgets are reduced and more stable, creating higher profitability. Streamlined IT staffing no longer burdens the company, allowing for improved support margins and higher productivity. VMs ease the effects of such financial bottlenecks and Azure provides all the benefits of this relief with far fewer headaches for corporate management.

5. Increased Security

Azure puts a premium on security at all levels and VMs are no different. Azure Resource Manager ensures companies control access to VMs. Meanwhile, backup or failover goals are easily achieved with Azure Backup or Azure Site Recovery. Safe, well-maintained datacenters with encrypted connections ensure far better up-time and recovery in the event of site outages.

7. Ease of Use

With templates, Azure VMs can be put into production far faster than with conventional servers. Customers can create their own templates and maintain them or make use of standard ones on Azure Resource Manager. New VMs can be available in minutes rather than weeks creating a nimble IT business model all businesses can enjoy. Development plans are much simpler, especially with migration and planning tools available in Azure Resource Manager making implementation far faster than ever so companies can relieve all internal bottlenecks whether they be support or budgetary in nature.

7. The Benefits of Azure

Microsoft’s cloud platform has grown and widened in usefulness in recent years, rivaling or surpassing that of competitors. Azure provides a solid VM platform with a wide range of server offerings to satisfy all levels of need. Redundancy and business consistency make VM infrastructure even more effective than ever. Data centers with a wide-range of products complete with high-availability and many related offerings present even the largest of customers with the necessary options for VM infrastructure whether companies need general-use computing, memory optimized VMs, as well as burstable and compute optimized VMs.

Add SQL instances with the latest features as well as backup and recovery options created for any business class in mind and Azure VMs become a prized asset in an era of increased competition. The latest of the Azure cloud is maintained, patched and secured, leaving management assured of business consistency.

VMs are now the foundation of cost-efficient IT business models. Microsoft Azure VM instances are a widely used, effective cloud-based model every business can use to achieve lower costs, higher profits, better security, and business consistency while creating a nimble business environment. Find the right VMs for any budget and needs to begin creating a more robust IT infrastructure with Azure and its wide range of VMs.