Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Visual Studio subscribers are entitled to Azure Dev/Test pricing – discounted rates on Azure services in their Azure cloud instance to reduce the costs of operating ongoing dev/test workloads within . For example, typical web app dev/test environments using Azure SQL database services & Azure App Services are discounted up to 57%.

Discounted Azure services for Visual Studio subscribers include:

• Windows Server/Client VM (No Windows licensing required)
• Azure SQL Database (55% off)
• Azure Logic Apps (50% off)
• Azure App Service (Varies by instance size/type)
• Azure Cloud Services instances (Varies by instance size/type)
• Azure HDInsight instances (Varies by instance size/type)
• …and more

In addition to discounted Azure use, Visual Studio subscribers using Azure Dev/Test environments are also entitled to:

• NO MICROSOFT LICENSING: No charge to use Windows Server, SQL Server, and 100s of other software products downloaded through Visual Studio subscriptions for dev/test on Azure Virtual Machines.
• NO SUBSCRIPTION REQ’D FOR TESTERS: Free access for Testers without Visual Studio subscriptions to Azure dev/test environments for user acceptance testing

GETTING STARTED
For information about configuration & details, depending on how you contract with Microsoft:

• Azure Dev/Test pricing | Microsoft Azure
  • For Enterprise Agreement owners – Enterprise Dev/Test
  • For Microsoft Customer Agreement owners – Azure Plan for Dev/Test
  • For Individuals with Visual Studio subscriptions – Pay-As-You-Go Dev/Test

Additional notes:

• Not available through CSPs
  Azure Dev/Test benefits are currently unavailable through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner-led channel. For those purchasing licenses through a Microsoft partner, Visual Studio subscriptions must be purchased through the alternative options listed below, in order to receive the Azure Dev/Test discounted rates.
• Not available with monthly (cloud) Visual Studio subscriptions
  Azure Dev/Test pricing is not available with monthly (cloud) subscriptions. To view a comparison of benefits available through standard subscriptions vs cloud subscriptions, go to Visual Studio subscriptions pricing.
• No Service Level Agreements
  No service-level agreements exist for Azure Dev/Test subscriptions – except for Azure DevOps and Azure Monitor.

Watch this quick summary video of special Azure benefits for Visual Studio subscribers: