Figure 12.8 Sample of the Microsoft Azure pricing calculator
You may wonder why the price of a Linux virtual machine is less than the price of a
Windows Server virtual machine if all that is being provided is the virtual machine.
You are actually getting more than that with a Windows Server virtual machine. The
Windows Server license is part of the price of the VM instance, which means that you
don’t need to separately license the Windows Server operating system running in
Microsoft Azure. Note that as your Windows Server licenses are covered by Software
Assurance, the Hybrid Use Benefit (HUB) enables a discount to be applied to Azure
usage equivalent to the price difference between a Linux and Windows VM, which
essentially boils down to enabling you to bring the Windows Server licenses that you
own on-premises over to Azure. More details on this offer can be found at
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/hybrid-use-benefit/.
That is not the case for any paid Linux distributions or other applications such as SQL
Server. These have to be separately licensed unless when creating the virtual machine,
you select a SQL Server or BizTalk Server image that includes the SQL Server/BizTalk
Server license as part of the virtual machine price. Also note that if you want to
manage virtual machines running in Microsoft Azure with System Center, you need to
license System Center accordingly.
If you intend to host a long-term SQL server deployment in Microsoft Azure, it is