While calculating the price using the Pricing Calculator | Microsoft Azure, I also found that when using Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes, up to 6 vCPUs in the Kubernetes cluster are free. This is because Azure charges for the additional management and monito

Question

While calculating the price using the Pricing Calculator on Microsoft Azure, I found that when using Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes, up to 6 vCPUs in the Kubernetes cluster are free. Beyond 6 vCPUs, there is a cost associated with using Azure's extended services.

My question is: why does Azure charge if we are using our own on-premises VMs beyond 6 vCPUs? Do you mean that we have to use VMs with less than 6 core processors to avoid Azure charges? Please help clarify this.

Answer 1

Hello Varsha Zutshi,

Thanks for your question.

Yes, The first 6 vCPU’s are free and that encompasses the total vCPUs. It is eligible for Azure Hybrid Benefit Azure Hybrid Benefit - Azure Cloud Computing

Azure charges for the management and monitoring services provided by Azure Arc beyond 6 vCPUs to cover the costs associated with the services offered.

For more specific information on Costs. See:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/scenarios/hybrid/arc-enabled-kubernetes/eslz-arc-kubernetes-cost-governance

Please let me know if you have further questions.

If the above information was useful, please remember to 'Accept Answer'

Answer 2

Hi @Varsha Zutshi

Eventhough you are using your own on-premises VMs, Azure charges for the management capabilities and services. The pricing structure is designed to support smaller environments for free while charging for larger deployments to cover the costs of additional features and support.

The best thing is that if you are using 8 vCPUs, the first 6 are free as per the free tier and you only pay for the additional 2 vCPUs. The charges are nominal with around $2 per vCPU per month.

Refer:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/azure-arc/kubernetes/

Hope this helps you.