Microsoft Enterprise Agreement

Who is impacted?

Deprecation and removal impact customers who have previously added, or plan to add, a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement target to manage Azure non-government subscriptions.

• Customers who have previously added a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement target are advised to immediately remove the target from the user interface, and then add the Azure Billing target.

• Customers planning to add a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement target should use the Azure Billing target instead.

The Azure Billing target leverages the new cost management APIs and cost exports recommended by Microsoft. For instructions on adding the Azure Billing target, see Azure Billing.

Now that the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement target has been deprecated:

• No new features will be introduced.

• The following charts may not show historical cost data initially. Customers who notice any data loss in their environment should note that the charts will rebuild the data over time.

  • Workload Cost Breakdown

  • Cost Breakdown by Tag

  • Top Billed Cost by Account

  • Top Billed Cost by Service

  • Billed Cost by Service Provider

• The target will continue to be available for customers to add or use, and will continue to discover pricing data.

• Customers can continue to report problems with the target. Turbonomic Support will answer questions, help with configuration issues, and provide any known workarounds.

Details about the removal will be available later.

Who is not impacted?

Deprecation and removal do not impact customers who have previously added, or plan to add, a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement target to manage Azure government subscriptions. Customers with these subscriptions should use the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement target until further notice. Currently, the Azure Billing target cannot be used to manage government subscriptions.

Overview of the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement Target

You can configure Turbonomic to manage Azure government subscriptions within the context of a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA).

An EA defines specific pricing, including the pricing for reservations. When you configure an EA target, and set the EA key to your Azure targets, Turbonomic uses that richer pricing information to calculate workload placement and reservations coverage for your Azure environment.

To enable Turbonomic management of Azure EA environments, you must configure:

• One Microsoft Enterprise Agreement target

• At least one Service Principal target that can discover the underlying Azure subscriptions. For information about Azure service principal targets, see Microsoft Azure.

In the Targets View, you can identify the targets related to Azure EA as follows:

1. EA Target

   The target that discovers the EA to track pricing and reservations. You can have one EA target per Turbonomic deployment.

2. Azure Subscription Targets

   The targets that manage the workloads in your Azure environment. These are discovered by Service Principal targets. Note that not all subscription targets necessarily participate in the EA. Expand these entries to see the related Service Principal target. For members of the EA, you can see the related EA target as well.

   Subscriptions that do not participate in the EA appear as Standalone targets.

   In this example, EA-Prod is one of the subscriptions in this EA.

   Note:

   In rare circumstances, you can have a subscription that is not in use. The subscription has no workloads associated with it. In this case, Turbonomic identifies the subscription as Standalone. This is because the target cannot discover any cost or usage information that would relate the subscription to its EA.

   Empty Azure EA subscriptions that are not incurring any charges will not stitch with the Azure Billing target or the Azure EA target, and a discrepancy will occur in the offer ID of the subscription. Once the subscription incurs a charge, the stitching occurs and the subscription should correctly associate with the Azure Billing target with the correct offer ID.

3. Service Principal Targets

   The Azure target that you configure to discover Azure subscription targets. Expand the entry to see the discovered targets. If you have configured an EA target, the entry lists that as well, along with the EA enrollment number.

   In this example, the Service Principal target (core.windows.net) discovers the underlying subscriptions. Some subscriptions (such as EA - Prod) participate in the EA (3a) and other subscriptions (such as EAtest) are standalone or pay-as-you-go (3b).

Reservations and Azure EA

For Azure environments, Turbonomic can only discover and use reservations if you have configured a Microsoft Enterprise Account target, and if one or more subscriptions participate in that EA.

To discover and manage reservations in Azure environments, Turbonomic uses both the EA target and the associated subscription targets. On its own, a subscription target exposes costs for pay-as-you-go pricing. The EA target discovers pricing for the available reservations. Turbonomic combines this information to track:

• Utilization of reservations

• VMs covered by reservations

• VM costs (accounting for reservations)

• Purchase recommendations

Cost Calculations for Azure Environments

To understand the reported costs in your Azure environment, consider these points:

• For targets that participate in the EA, Turbonomic uses the terms of the given EA, and bases costs on the Offer ID that is effective for the given subscription.

• For VMs in Azure, reservations pricing does not include the cost of the OS license. However pricing for on-demand VMs does include the license cost.

  Note:

  For Microsoft Azure EA environments, the projected cost for actions to purchase reservations might not match associated costs you find in the Microsoft Pricing Calculator.

  Turbonomic actions can recommend purchases. For these recommendations, the action assumes a free Linux OS, so the cost estimate does not include the OS cost. However, The Microsoft Pricing Calculator does include costs for OS licenses. As a result, when you compare the Turbonomic cost estimates to the values in the Pricing Calculator, it's likely that the two estimates will not match. This difference also affects the Break Even Point that appears in the Recommended RI Purchases chart. Because the recommended purchases do not include Azure costs for OS licenses, the listed Break Even Point can be optimistic.

• For on-prem workloads you migrated to Azure, Turbonomic recognizes Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHUB) savings for reservations and on-demand workloads. The costs you see in Turbonomic charts include this benefit. However, remember that recommended actions do not include any license cost, so the actions will not reflect any proposed AHUB savings (see above).

Before Adding Targets

Review the following items before adding Azure Billing targets.

• Access Key and Enrollment Number

  A Microsoft Azure EA access key and an EA enrollment number are required to add the target.

• Firewall and Proxy Access

  Your firewall must allow access to the consumption.azure.com:443 address.

• Access to Cost Data

  Be sure to enable access to your cost data. You can enable access in the Azure portal or in the EA portal.

  Note:

  For additional information, see Assign access to Cost Management data.

  Enabling Access to Cost Data via the Azure Portal

  1. Log into to the Azure portal (https://portal.azure.com).

     You should log in with an enterprise administrator account.

  2. Open your Billing Account.

     Navigate to Cost Management + Billing | Billing scopes. Select your billing account from the list of available accounts.

  3. Configure cost access.

     In the Settings group, select Policies. Then turn on DEPARTMENT ADMINS CAN VIEW CHARGES and ACCOUNT OWNERS CAN VIEW CHARGES.

  Enabling Access to Cost Data via the EA Portal

  1. Log into to the Azure portal (https://ea.azure.com).

     You should log in with an enterprise administrator account.

  2. Select Manage in the left-hand navigation pane

  3. Configure cost access.

     For the cost management scopes that you want to provide access to, enable the charge option to DA view charges and/or AO view charges.

  Note:

  After you configure cost access, most scopes also require Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) permission configuration in the Azure portal.

  If you just enabled these settings, it can take up to 24 hours for the changes to take effect. For more information, see Troubleshoot enterprise cost views in the Microsoft Azure documentation.

  If you perform self-service exchanges for your reservations, Turbonomic does not discover the new charges for the exchanged reservations through the Azure EA target. To track the charges after you have exchanged reservations, ensure you have an Azure subscription target for the affected scope of Azure workloads, and that subscription has read access to reservations information.

Adding Microsoft Enterprise Agreement Targets

To add targets, select Microsoft Enterprise Agreement in the Target Configuration page, and provide the following information:

• Target Name

  The name that identifies the target in Turbonomic. This name is for display purposes only and does not need to match any name in Azure.

• Enrollment Number

  The EA enrollment number (found in your EA admin account at ea.azure.com)

• API Key

  The API Access Key for the EA (found in your EA admin account at ea.azure.com)

• Proxy Host

  The IP address of the proxy server used, if any

• Proxy Port

  The port number of the proxy server

• Proxy User

  The username of the proxy user used to authenticate

• Proxy Password

  The password of the proxy user used to authenticate

Monitored Resources

Turbonomic does not monitor resources for Microsoft Enterprise Agreement targets.

Actions

Turbonomic does not recommend actions for Microsoft Enterprise Agreement targets. However, the billing information will be used in conjunction with the Azure target to generate actions.