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Cloud license management

Cloud license management helps you track your organization's license usage and identify opportunities to optimize your spending by leveraging Bring Your Own License offerings.

Bring Your Own License (BYOL)​

Bring Your Own License, or BYOL, is a licensing model that allows you to transfer your eligible software and operating system (OS) licenses to a cloud environment, where you can apply them to resources like virtual machines and containers at no additional licensing cost. This provides substantial savings compared to PayAsYouGo licensing models, which charge a premium for software and OS licensing based on the configuration of the underlying resource.

Azure Hybrid Benefit​

Azure Hybrid Benefit is Microsoft’s BYOL program. For more information, see Azure Hybrid Benefit .

Supported features​

Cloud license management currently supports Microsoft’s Azure Hybrid Benefit licensing offer, with discoverability on:

  • Windows Server licenses

  • SQL Server licenses

Cloud license management use cases​

  • Monitor your organization's license coverage for BYOL virtual machines. You can detect a shortfall in the number of core licenses required for your BYOL virtual machines and use that information to maintain compliance with Microsoft's licensing terms.

  • Identity opportunities to save costs on unused licenses. You can detect when your Windows Server and SQL Server licenses exceed the number required for the virtual machines in your inventory and use that information to reduce the number of licenses your organization pays for.

  • Identity opportunities to optimize your spending by migrating your eligible virtual machines to BYOL. You can view which individual virtual machines are eligible for BYOL, as well as a total count of all your eligible virtual machines, and use that information to purchase the additional Windows Server and SQL Server licenses required to migrate the virtual machines to Azure Hybrid Benefit.

Overview of Cloud license management​

Cloud license management has pages for each supported license type that is applicable to BYOL. Currently, these pages include Windows Server and SQL Server.

The Cloud license management pages each display Savings and Licenses indicators that provide an overview of your organization’s status on BYOL licensing, and the realized and potential cost savings you stand to gain. For more information on these indicators, see Windows Server: Reference and SQL Server: Reference.

The Cloud license management pages also display a resource table that provides detailed information on each of your licensed devices. For more information on these resource tables, see Windows Server: Reference and SQL Server: Reference.

Data filters​

The data shown on the Cloud license management pages can be filtered in several ways:

  • Column selector: Use the Columns selector in the table menu to show or hide columns.

  • Column filter: Use the search function at the top of select columns to search and filter data.

  • Column headers: To sort data based on a specific column, select the relevant column header.

The table filtering affects all data shown in the tables and all exports of data from the tables.

Get started​