Changes to the Azure reservation exchange policy

Article
11/17/2023

Through a grace period, you have the ability to exchange Azure compute reservations (Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances, Azure Dedicated Host reservations, and Azure App Services reservations) until at least July 1, 2024. In October 2022, it was announced that the ability to exchange Azure compute reservations would be deprecated on January 1, 2024. This policy’s start date remains January 1, 2024 but with this grace period you now have until at least July 1, 2024 to exchange your Azure compute reservations. Compute reservations purchased prior to the end of the grace period will reserve the right to exchange one more time after the grace period ends.

This grace period is designed to provide more time for you to determine your resource needs and plan accordingly.

Azure savings plan for compute was launched in October 2022 to provide you with more flexibility and accommodate changes such as virtual machine series and regions. With savings plan providing flexibility automatically, we adjusted our reservations exchange policy.

Note

Exchanges are changing only for the reservations explicitly mentioned previously. If you have any other type of reservation, then the policy change doesn't affect you. For example, if you have a reservation for Azure VMware Solution, then the policy change doesn't affect it. However, after the grace period ends if you exchange a reservation for a type affected by the policy change, and the new reservation will be affected by the no-exchange policy.

You can continue to use instance size flexibility for VM sizes, but Microsoft is ending exchanges for regions and instance series for these Azure compute reservations.

The current cancellation policy for reserved instances isn't changing. The total canceled commitment can't exceed USD 50,000 in a 12-month rolling window for a billing profile or single enrollment.

A compute reservation exchange for another compute reservation exchange is similar to, but not the same as a reservation trade-in for a savings plan. The difference is that you can always trade in your Azure reserved instances for compute for a savings plan. There's no time limit for trade-ins.

You can continue to use and purchase reservations for those predictable, stable workloads where you know the specific configuration and need or want more savings.

Learn more about Azure savings plan for compute and how it works with reservations.

Example scenarios

The following examples describe scenarios that might represent your situation with the grace period.

Scenario 1

You purchase a one-year compute reservation sometime between the month of October 2022 and the end of June 2024. Before July 2024, you can exchange it as many times as you like under the grace period. Starting July 2024, you can exchange the compute reservation one more time through the end of its term. However, if the reservation is exchanged after the end of June 2024, the reservation is no longer exchangeable because exchanges are processed as a cancellation, refund, and a new purchase.