Pricing
During Community Technology Preview (CTP), services included in Windows Azure will be available without charge - subject to certain limits:
- Total compute usage: 2000 VM hours
- Cloud storage capacity: 50GB
- Total storage bandwidth: 20GB/day
Once we start billing, Windows Azure will be priced and licensed through both packaged offers, and the consumption-based model outlined below.
- Compute = $0.12 / hour
- Storage = $0.15 / GB stored / month
- Storage Transactions = $0.01 / 10K
- Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB
Windows Azure Service Level Agreement
For compute, we guarantee that when you deploy two or more role instances in different fault and upgrade domains, your internet facing roles will have external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time. For storage, we guarantee that at least 99.9% of the time we will successfully process correctly formatted requests that we receive to add, update, read and delete data. More information on Service Level Agreements.
Measuring Windows Azure Consumption
- Compute time, measured in machine hours: Windows Azure compute hours are charged only for when your application is deployed. When developing and testing your application, developers will want to remove the compute instances that are not being used to minimize compute hour billing.
- Storage, measured in GB: Storage is metered in units of average daily amount of data stored (in GB) over a monthly period. For example, if a user uploaded 30GB of data and stored it on Windows Azure for a day, her monthly billed storage would be 1 GB. If the same user uploaded 30GB of data and stored it on Windows Azure for an entire billing period, her monthly billed storage would be 30GB. Storage is also metered in terms of storage transactions used to add, update, read and delete storage data. These are billed at a rate of $0.01 for 10,000 (10k) transaction requests
- Bandwidth requirements measured in GB (transmissions to and from the Windows Azure datacenter): Bandwidth is charged based on the total amount of data going in and out of the Azure services via the internet in a given 30-day period. Bandwidth within a datacenter is free.
- Transactions, measured as application requests
- Web Edition: Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99 / month
- Business Edition: Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99 / month
- Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB
SQL Azure Service Level Agreement
SQL Azure customers will have connectivity between the database and our internet gateway. SQL Azure will maintain a “Monthly Availability” of 99.9% during a calendar month. More information on Service Level Agreements.
Measuring SQL Azure Consumption
Web Edition Relational Database includes:
- Up to 1 GB of T-SQL based relational database
- Self-managed DB, auto high availability
- Best suited for Web application, Departmental custom apps.
Business Edition DB includes:
- Up to 10 GB of T-SQL based relational database
- Self-managed DB, auto high availability
- Additional features in the future like auto-partition, CLR, fanouts etc.
- Best suited for ISVs packaged LOB apps, Department custom apps
- Messages = $0.15/100K message operations , including Service Bus messages and Access Control tokens
- Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB
.NET Services Service Level Agreement
Uptime percentage commitments and SLA credits for .NET Services are equivalent to those specified in the Windows Azure SLA.
Measuring .NET Services Consumption
Messages (Includes Access Control, Orchestration, and Reliable Queuing for message): .NET Services allow developers to easily connect their cloud applications and databases with existing software assets and users through the exchange of messages. Customers will pay only for the number of message operations that their applications use. The definition of a “message operation” includes Service Bus messages and Access Control tokens. Messages are charged to the customer in discrete blocks of 100,000 (“100k”) for each monthly billing period. For example:
- A customer who consumed 95,000 messages would be billed for 1x100k messages (plus the bandwidth used to send messages in or out).
- A customer who uses 150,000 messages in a billing period would be charged for 2x100k messages (plus the bandwidth used to send messages in or out).
- A customer who uses 20 million messages in a billing period would be charged for 200x100k messages (plus the bandwidth used to send messages in or out).
