Buy Microsoft Azure reservations on behalf of your customers

Appropriate roles: Admin agent | Sales agent

This article explains how to buy Azure reservations on behalf of your customers in Partner Center. It also identifies markets where Azure reservations are unavailable.

Before you begin

• Azure reservations aren't available in all markets. To see a list of unavailable markets, see Azure reservations—unavailable markets at the end of this article.

• If you want customers to be able to buy their own Azure reservations from a prior Azure subscription you purchased for them, see Give customers permission to buy their own Azure reservations.

• Partnres purchase Azure reservations under the Azure plan as long as their customer has signed the Microsoft Customer Agreement.

  • For more information, see:
    • Confirm customer acceptance of the Microsoft Customer Agreement)
    • Purchase the Azure plan for customers and access the latest Azure services.

• Customers must already have an active Azure subscription before you can purchase reservations on their behalf

• Software subscription costs (such as SQL Database or SUSE Linux software) aren't included in Azure reservation prices

• Commercial pricing from Microsoft to you doesn't include taxes (unless your location is Brazil, where the commercial price to you does include taxes).

• Sales agents and Help Desk agents need explicit access to the Azure subscription to:

  • Buy or manage a subscription in the Azure portal on behalf of the customer.
  • Make exchanges and refunds on behalf of the customer.
  • File support requests on behalf of the customer.

• The Partner of Record (indirect reseller) is inherited from the Azure CSP subscription that you select when indirect providers purchase reservations through the Azure portal.

• The Partner of Record for Azure reservations can't be changed post-purchase. You can cancel the existing reservation and purchase a new one with the new Partner of Record.

• If a customer wants to transfer an Azure subscription from Direct or EA to CSP, reservations don't get transferred.

Purchase Azure reservations

To buy Microsoft Azure reservations on behalf of your customers in Partner Center, use the following steps:

1. Sign in to Partner Center and select Customers.

2. On the Customers page, find the customer who wants to purchase Azure reservations and then select the down arrow to expand that customer's row.

3. Select Add products and then select Azure.

   a. Choose the customer's market segment from the Segment list.

   b. Choose Reservations from the product Type list.

   c. Choose the type of reservation the customer wants from the Reservations type list.

4. Choose the customer's subscription you want to add Azure reservations to from the Customer subscription list.

   Important

   Azure reservations must be associated with an active Azure subscription. If the customer doesn't already have an active Azure subscription, you can select Azure to add one.

5. Use the filters to find Azure reservations on virtual machines that meet your customer's requirements.

6. After you find the reservations you want to buy, enter the number of reserved instances the customer needs in Quantity and then select Add to cart.

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 as necessary and then select Review to verify that your order is correct.

   On the Review your orders page, you can:

   • Verify or change the reserved instances quantity.

   • Select the reservation's scope. The reservation's scope can cover one subscription or multiple subscriptions (shared scope).

     • If you scope the reservation to a single subscription, the reservation discount is applied to that subscription only.
     • If you select Shared, the reservation discount is applied to any subscriptions within the customer's billing context.

     Note

     If you opt to limit the reservation's scope to a single Azure subscription, you might need to increase the subscription's vCPU quota. To increase the subscription's vCPU quota, create a support request in the Azure portal by following the instructions at Increase regional vCPU quotas.

     Note

     If your customer is under the Azure plan, Scope is set to Shared at time of purchase. That scope can be changed later.

   • If you're a provider partner, select the reseller that you want to associate with the product.

   • If your Azure reservation does support the Billing plan option, you can select monthly billing from the dropdown menu.

   • If your Azure reservation doesn't support the Billing plan option, billing frequency defaults to one-time billing.

8. Select Buy to purchase the order.

   The details of your order, including your order number, are displayed on the Confirm page.

9. Select Done to go to your Order history page.

10. To manage the customer's reservation in the Azure portal, find the customer on your Customers page and then select the down arrow to expand the customer's row. Select Microsoft Azure Management Portal to open the customer's record in the Azure portal.

Azure reservations—unavailable in partner center

Not all reservations available to CSPs are in the partner center catalog user experiences and APIs. Some reservations can only be acquired in the Azure portal. Most of the high volume reservations are supported in the partner center. Partners that can't find a reservation they need or expect in the partner center should use the Azure portal to acquire the reservation. The partner center team continued to add reservations for CSPs to the partner center experiences.

Some CSP partners may find reservations selected in the partner center aren't available to purchase because some reservation's inventory isn't available. This availability may change on a daily bases. After the partner selects the reservation in partner center, they may find there aren't stock keeping units (SKUs) available. Partners experiencing inventory gaps can verify the same availability gaps in the Azure portal.

When to contact partner support

Partners should use the Azure portal to acquire reservations they can't find in the partner center. Partners that see the reservation in the partner center but don't see SKUs should use the Azure portal to verify the availablity. If the reservation is available in both portals, but partner center shows no availability while the Azure portal does show availability, parters can raise a support request and so the partner center team can investigate further.

Azure reservations—unavailable markets

Related content

• Sell Microsoft Azure Reserved Instances
• Managing Azure reservations in Partner Center
• VM sizing for maximum Azure reservation usage
• Purchase Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances in the Partner Center developer documentation
• Give customers permission to buy their own Azure reservations