Where i can see how many licenses avaliable to use in Azure Hybrid benefit?

Fábio Santos 65

I want use Hybrid benefit, where i can see how many licenses i have available, and how many are in use?

kobulloc-MSFT 26,131 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-10-12T15:47:15.36+00:00

Hello, @Fábio Santos !

We received your feedback and want to make sure that your question has been answered. Azure tracks the number of VMs using your Azure Hybrid Benefit however there isn't an Azure dashboard where you can view the total number of OS licenses you own (as that is external to Azure), or their use in non-Azure locations. For more assistance with OS licenses, you would need to contact an OS license specialist.

Your feedback is important to us to please accept the answer below to signify that the question has been answered or let us know in the comments what additional information you need for this question to be answered.

Thank you!
kobulloc-MSFT 26,131 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-10-17T00:45:27.17+00:00

Hello, @Fábio Santos !

We received your feedback and want to make sure that your question has been answered. Your feedback is important to us to please accept the answer below to signify that the question has been answered or let us know in the comments what additional information you need for this question to be answered.

Thank you!

1 answer

kobulloc-MSFT 26,131 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-10-11T17:38:24.63+00:00
Hello, @Fábio Santos !

How do I see how many VMs have been used for Azure Hybrid Benefit?

The number of licenses available are the number of core licenses that you own that are covered with active Software Assurance or Windows Server Subscriptions. You can use the Azure Hybrid Benefit Savings Calculator and check out the Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server Documentation for more detail on how this works.

To check how many are in use, the recommended approach is to use either Azure CLI or PowerShell to count all virtual machines and virtual machine scale sets deployed with Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server:

Check VMs in use with Azure CLI:

az vm list --query "[?licenseType=='Windows_Server']" -o table

Check VMs in use with PowerShell:

Get-AzVM | ?{$_.LicenseType -like "Windows_Server"} | select ResourceGroupName, Name, LicenseType

You can also check your Microsoft Azure bill to determine how many VMs with Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server you're running. You can find information about the number of instances with the benefit under Additional Info:

"{"ImageType":"WindowsServerBYOL","ServiceType":"Standard_A1","VMName":"","UsageType":"ComputeHR"}"

For additional information, check out the documentation:

Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server: How to maintain compliance

List all VMs and virtual machine scale sets with Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server in a subscription

I hope this has been helpful! Your feedback is important so please take a moment to accept answers.

If you still have questions, please let us know what is needed in the comments so the question can be answered. Thank you for helping to improve Microsoft Q&A!
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Fábio Santos 65 Reputation points

2023-10-11T20:15:09.1233333+00:00

Hi,

Tks for the answer. My question isn't about how many Azure Vms are using Azure Hybrid benefit. It's more about how many more i can use.

"The number of licenses available are the number of core licenses that you own that are covered with active Software Assurance or Windows Server Subscription"

But where i can see this? the number of licenses available? Where a see how many licenses my organization purchased and are not expired (Some Microsoft Portal where i can login with my organization account)?

And this licenses can be used on-prem, azure vms, vmware right? So there is a place to track this? Something like :

You have 70 active licenses, 50 in Azure Vms, 10 on -prem and 15 on vmware. There is 5 left.

Regards,

Fábio Santos

kobulloc-MSFT 26,131 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-10-11T20:45:42.3766667+00:00

Hello, @Fábio Santos !

The licenses are external to Azure (which is why you need to manually assign the Azure Hybrid Benefit during VM creation) so unfortunately there's no single place where you can view everything that you mentioned.

To track the Azure usage, you would use one of the options mentioned in the documentation above. Both the Azure CLI command and the PowerShell command work well and can be used with Azure Cloud Shell. Determining how many more VMs you can use does require a bit of calculation on your end but it is currently the official process for maintaining your Azure Hybrid Benefit compliance.

For total licenses and help with determining on-prem or other usage, you may want to reach out to licensing support such as Microsoft Volume License Key assisted support.

Fábio Santos 65 Reputation points

2023-10-11T21:02:41.3166667+00:00

Thank you again. I have two More questions

how Microsoft controls if i own the licenses that i assigned to Azure VMs? And lets imagine that i have 50 licenses, where 40 are assigned on-prem and i assigned 20 on Azure VM (exceed on 10 licenses). How microsoft handles this, and what are the repercussions?

2 - I have one license and i assigned to 4 vcpu Azure VM. after two months i deployed a new Azure VM with 8 vcpu. So i want switch the license for new VM, how i do this? It's simple as disable the hybrid benefit check box on first VM and activate the second VM? This have any downtime on first VM? Is this approach valid?

Many Thanks

kobulloc-MSFT 26,131 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-10-11T21:43:46.0533333+00:00

Hello, @Fábio Santos !

No worries! In regards to your questions:

How are licenses verified for compliance? Will I be audited? Quick disclaimer: I am not a Windows licensing specialist and you would need to talk to a licensing specialist for an official answer. My understanding from an Azure standpoint is that in bring your own license scenarios, signifying that you are using the Azure Hybrid Benefit during VM creation ensures immediate billing accuracy. The license management system that gets used when you install an OS (whether that be locally or in the cloud) would track your license usage and the penalties for misuse are expensive from what I've seen reported online. You definitely want to make sure that you are in compliance to avoid an audit.

How do I transfer the Azure Hybrid Benefit from one VM to another? You can toggle and convert an existing VM between Azure Hybrid Benefit and pay on-demand. For your scenario, you would toggle off the benefit on the existing VM and toggle on the benefit with the desired VM. This can be done using the portal, PowerShell, or CLI and does not incur downtime or restart the VM:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/hybrid-use-benefit-licensing#convert-an-existing-vm-using-azure-hybrid-benefit-for-windows-server
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Where i can see how many licenses avaliable to use in Azure Hybrid benefit?

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