Azure Purchase FAQ

To view and edit the Azure account information, you must sign in to the Azure Account Center as the account administrator. Below are instructions in managing the payment method for Azure subscription/s.

1. Go to the Azure Account Center.
2. On the subscriptions page, click the subscription for which you want to update the payment method.
3. On the subscription summary page, click Change payment method. The Change Payment Method tool appears in a separate window.

   NOTE: You can also access the Account Center from the Microsoft Azure classic portal. To do so, click your account name, and then click View my bill.

4. On the Choose payment method page, click the drop-down list, select the payment method you want update, and then click Edit.
5. On the details page, verify that you have selected the correct credit card type and card number.
6. Make necessary changes to the card details, and then click Next.

Currently, the Change Payment Method tool does not allow you to remove an existing credit card as a payment method. For information about how to remove a credit card, see Remove a credit card that you no longer use as an Azure payment method.

You can also visit our MSDN page for other ways to manage your services.

Yes. With our Spending Limit feature, customers who sign up for a Free Trial, MSDN, MPN or BizSpark offer can utilize Azure without any fear of getting charged as long as they keep the Spending Limit feature turned on.

For those on our member benefit offers (e.g., MSDN), you do have the ability to have the Spending Limit feature re-enabled at the beginning of your next billing cycle. The Spending Limit cannot be re-enabled for the current billing period once turned off.

For the initial release of this feature, the Spending Limit is set at $0 and cannot be adjusted. It is designed to enable customers on our Free Trial, MSDN, MPN or BizSpark offers to utilize Azure with complete assurance of not being billed.

There are several ways to optimize your Azure applications:

• Deploy two or more instances to qualify for the SLA
• Allocate a compute instance of the right size as per the application's requirements
• Make use of our free inbound data transfers to upload data to Azure
• Allocate compute and storage in the same region. All data transfers within a region are free
• Use Content Distribution Network (CDN) to reduce cost and improve performance
• Delete your test application immediately after your test concludes. Azure staging environment is not free. Whenever an application is deployed (even in staging), you will get charged. You can also deploy the application locally using the Azure SDK until you are comfortable deploying to the Azure cloud.
• Allocate the right sized SQL Database based on your needs.

Yes, through license mobility if you have SA you can "bring-your-own-license" for all Virtual Machines supported server products except Windows Server.

There are currently no plans to offer Azure or SQL Database through SPLA.

Azure has separate SLA’s for all of services that are generally available and not in preview. Please refer to our SLA page for the latest details

Azure SLA Credits are calculated on a per subscription basis as a percentage of the bill for that service in the billing month the SLA was missed. The service credits are applied to the subsequent month’s bill. Generally, we provide 10% credit if we fall below the first threshold (99.95% or 99.9%, depending on the service) and 25% if we fall beneath the subsequent threshold (99%). Please refer to our SLA page for complete details.

Azure Service Level Agreements are independent of our on-premises Microsoft licensing agreements. Our SLAs for Azure provide you a monthly uptime guarantee for those services you consume in the cloud, with SLA credits against what we have billed you in the event we fail to meet the guarantee.

Yes.

Azure is designed to avoid downtime for customer applications, storage and service management capability during maintenance activities on the Azure platform. Our availability commitment applies to customer applications which use a minimum of two role instances. Customers with single instance applications can learn about Azure best practices for mitigating downtime by reading this MSDN article entry. The Azure SLA is documented here.

In the event of an unplanned service disruption on the Azure Platform, status updates will be made on our service dashboard page and customers will also receive notice in the management portal.

Azure is intended for use by businesses to build cloud scale applications and services. However, individuals (i.e. consumers) may also purchase Azure services.

For VAT purposes, sales of Azure are regarded as the supply of services from Ireland and the place of supply, e.g., where the VAT liability arises, depends on where the customer is located and the VAT status of the customer. Such sales are subject to the following VAT rules:

• If the customer is located in Ireland and does not hold a VAT exemption certificate, Irish VAT at the current rate of 23% will be applied to all invoices. VAT exempt Irish customers will be invoiced at 0% Irish VAT on receipt by Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited of a valid customer VAT excemption certificate.
• If the customer is located outside Ireland but within the EU and is VAT registered, 0% Irish VAT will be applied under the reverse charge procedure but only on receipt of the customer’s valid local VAT number during the purchase process.
• If the customer is located outside Ireland but within the EU and is not VAT registered or is VAT registered but does not provide Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited with a valid VAT number during the purchase process, local VAT rate will be applied.
• If the customer is located outside the EU (except Switzerland and Liechtenstein), 0% Irish VAT will be applied.
• If the customer is located in Switzerland or Liechtenstein, Swiss VAT at the current rate of 8% will be applied.
• If no VAT number is provided during the purchase process, VAT will be charged as set out above and will appear on each invoice as appropriate. To amend and get a VAT ID added, contact customer support
• Note: Any Irish or Swiss VAT applied may be recoverable from the appropriate tax authority, subject to conditions. Please contact your tax adviser, if required.

Microsoft has played a leading role in helping customers to smoothly transition from IPv4 to IPv6 for the past several years. To date, Microsoft has built IPv6 support into many of its products and solutions like Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Microsoft is committed to expanding the worldwide capabilities of the Internet through IPv6 and enabling a variety of valuable and exciting scenarios, including peer-to-peer and mobile applications. The foundational work to enable IPv6 in the Azure environment is well underway. However, we are unable to share a date when IPv6 support will be generally available at this time. For more information on IPv6 technologies and IPv6 support available in the Windows operating system today, see Microsoft’s IPv6 information site which includes business, technical, and developer resources: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb530961

The 6-Month plan is no longer available, however we now offer a 12-Month Plan. Existing customers on these plans can continue to utilize Azure under the terms of these plans. Customers looking for additional discounts and benefits in exchange for a deeper commitment to the platform can enter into an Enterprise Agreement (EA).

You can purchase Azure using a credit or debit card. Please note that we do not accept prepaid and virtual credit cards. There may be a delay before discounts are reflected on your bill. You are solely responsible for any credit card interest or other credit card charges that may result.

The other payment option is to be invoiced. Once you opt for the invoice option, you can't move to the credit card option. To sign up for invoicing, please go here.

Yes. If you would like to specify a different email address to receive notifications, please follow these directions:

1. Go to My Account in the top right corner of the Azure homepage
2. Click on Usage and Billing
3. Click on the Profile tab
4. In the right corner under Communication preferences, click here to update your email address in which you would like to receive notifications.