Microsoft Azure Dedicated Host

Hi all,

Microsoft announced a new preview feature called, Azure Dedicated Host. With this new feature, you can reserve a full physical server and thereby have complete control over virtual machine placement.

This new feature also allows you to use hybrid licensing, which means you can bring our on-premises licenses to the cloud. You will need to have purchased software assurance for these licenses.

When you choose your dedicated host, you will select which type of VM you want to place on it, in the preview you can choose between DSv3 and ESv3.

One of the benefits a dedicated host has is that you can now opt-in or out on scheduled maintenance in Azure. This flexibility removes a significant concern amongst some customers that want to know when updates are installed. By knowing when updates are applied, they know if this maintenance can be the root cause of an outage. Updates must be implemented within a 35-day window. Another benefit is that you can’t be affected by other customers workload; it will only host your workload.

When you use dedicated hosts, you need to plan for high availability as well. This planning includes the need to have more than one dedicated host deployed. You still have options like availability zones and fault domains, so remember to make use of these when planning dedicated hosts.

Dedicated hosts have some limitations; these include single series VM’s on a host. For instance, if you will need to choose between the DSv3 or ESv3 in the preview, you cannot mix the two types of VM’s on the same host. There is a maximum of 3000 vCPU per host, but that is probably not a limitation that will come into effect.

For information about pricing have a look at this website:

https://azure.microsoft.com/da-dk/pricing/details/virtual-machines/dedicated-host/

For more information about Azure dedicated hosts, have a look at this website:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/dedicated-hosts

If you want me to make a guide; video or blog post about using Azure Dedicated Host let me know, and I will create that.

I hope this post has been of interest, as always you can reach me on twitter @mracket.

4 thoughts on “Microsoft Azure Dedicated Host”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.