FAQ

In which countries is Windows Azure commercially available?
Windows Azure is commercially available in the following 41 countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, United States, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong S.A.R., Hungary, Israel, Luxemburg, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, and Trinidad and Tobago.
What are the support options for Windows Azure?
You will have access to a phone number to call at any time to report potential issues with Windows Azure service. Issues with Windows Azure service will be escalated to the Windows Azure operations team to investigate and correct. You can also call for developer support to assist you with your application at any time. Developer support will be charged on a per-incident basis but is being provided temporarily at no charge as an additional benefit to our customers. Premier customers, MSDN subscribers, and MPN members will be able to leverage support incidents and support hours provided as part of these program benefits. We will also continue to provide moderated forum support at no charge. You can access more information regarding support options here
What currencies can be used to purchase Windows Azure?
The following currencies will be used for these countries: Austria € EUR , Belgium € EUR , Canada $ CAD, Denmark kr DKK , Finland € EUR , France € EUR , Germany € EUR , Ireland € EUR , India $ USD, Italy € EUR, Japan ¥ JPY, Netherlands € EUR, New Zealand $ NZD, Norway kr NOK, Portugal € EUR, Singapore $ USD, Spain € EUR, Sweden kr SEK, Switzerland Fr CHF, United Kingdom £ GPB, United States $ USD,: Australia $ AUD, Brazil $ USD, Chile $ USD, Colombia $ USD, Costa Rica $ USD, Cypress € EUR Czech Republic € EUR, Greece € EUR, Hong Kong S.A.R. $ USD, Hungary € EUR, Israel $USD, Luxemburg € EUR, Malaysia $ USD, Mexico $ USD, Peru $ USD, Philippines $ USD, Poland € EUR, Puerto Rico $ USD, Romania € EUR and Trinidad & Tobago $ USD.
Can I try Windows Azure for free, without any risk of being charged?
Yes. With our new Spending Limit feature, customers who sign up for a new 3-Month Free Trial, MSDN or Cloud Essentials offer can utilize Windows Azure without any fear of getting charged as long as they keep the Spending Limit feature turned on.
If I turn off the Spending Limit can I turn it back on?
For the initial release of this feature, once you turn off the Spending Limit feature, it cannot be re-enabled.
Can I adjust the amount of the Spending Limit?
For the initial release of this feature, the Spending Limit is set at $0 (USD) and cannot be adjusted. It is designed to enable customers on our 3-Month Free Trial, MSDN and Cloud Essentials offers to utilize Windows Azure with complete assurance of not being billed.
Can existing 3-Month Free Trial, MSDN and Cloud Essentials utilize the Spending Limit feature?
Customers that have existing subscriptions as of December 10, 2011 (when this feature was introduced) have their Spending Limit turned off by default. For this initial release, it cannot be turned back on. However, MSDN subscribers that want to take advantage of the Spending Limit feature can cancel their existing subscription and sign up for a new MSDN subscription.
How do I optimize my Windows Azure applications around billing charges?
There are several ways to optimize your Windows Azure applications:
• Deploy two or more instances to qualify for the SLA
• Allocate a compute instance of the right size as per the applications requirements
• Make use of the no charge pricing promotion to upload data to Windows Azure
• Allocate compute and storage in the same region. All data transfers within a sub region are free
• Use Content Distribution Network (CDN) to reduce cost and improve performance
• Delete your test application immediately after your test concludes. Windows Azure staging environment is not free. Whenever an application is deployed (even in staging), you will get charged. You can also deploy the application locally using the Windows Azure SDK till you’re comfortable deploying to production.
• Allocate the right sized SQL Azure database based on your needs.
I have Windows Server, SQL Server or .NET licenses. Can I transfer them to Windows Azure, SQL Azure or Service Bus and Access Control?
No. Currently you can’t bring your existing on-premises Windows Server, SQL Server or .NET licenses to Windows Azure, SQL Azure or Service Bus and Access Control.
Are Windows Azure and SQL Azure available through SPLA?
There are currently no plans to offer Windows Azure or SQL Azure through SPLA.
What is the Windows Azure SLA agreement?
Windows Azure has separate SLA’s for compute and storage. For Compute, we guarantee that when you deploy two or more role instances in different fault and upgrade domains your Internet facing roles will have external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time. Additionally, we will monitor all of your individual role instances and guarantee that 99.9% of the time we will detect within two minutes when a role instance’s process is not running and initiate corrective.
For Storage, we guarantee that at least 99.9% of the time we will successfully process correctly formatted requests that we receive to add, update, read and delete data. We also guarantee that your storage accounts will have connectivity to our Internet gateway.

For CDN, we guarantee that the cached objects will be delivered with 99.9% availability on a monthly basis.

In order to qualify for the SLA credit, customers must deploy at least two instances of their application. Refer to our SLA page for the latest details.

For SQL Azure, we will maintain a “Monthly Availability” of 99.9% during a calendar month.

For Service Bus, we guarantee that at least 99.9% of the time Service Bus customers will have connectivity between a customer’s service endpoint and our Internet gateway; when our service fails to establish a connection from the gateway to a customer's service endpoint, then the service is assumed to be unavailable.

For Access Control, we guarantee that at least 99.9% of the time customers will have connectivity between the Access Control endpoints and our Internet gateway.

For Caching, we guarantee at least 99.9% of the time that customers will have connectivity between the Caching endpoints and our Internet gateway. In order to qualify for the SLA credit, customers must deploy at least two instances of their application. Refer to our SLA page for the latest details
What are the Windows Azure SLA Credits?
Windows Azure SLA Credits are calculated as a percentage of the bill for that service in the month the SLA was missed and then applied to the next month’s bill. Details are as below:
• Compute connectivity: 10% credit if we fall below 99.95%, 25% credit if we fall below 99%.
• Compute role Instance Monitoring: 10% credit if we fall below 99.9%, 25% credit if we fall below 99%.
• Storage: 10% credit if we fall below 99.9%, 25% credit if we fall below 99%.
• Content Delivery Network (CDN):10% below 99.9% monthly; 25% below 99.5%.
• In order to qualify for the SLA credit, customers must deploy at least two instances of their application.
How will the Windows Azure, SQL Azure, Caching, Service Bus, and Access Control SLA agreements work with current on-premise Microsoft licensing agreements?
Windows Azure, SQL Azure, Caching, Service Bus, and Access Control are independent of our on-premises Microsoft licensing agreements. Our SLAs for Windows Azure provide you a monthly uptime guarantee for those services you consume in the cloud, with SLA credits against what we have billed you in the event we fail to meet the guarantee.
Do we restrict resale of Windows Azure based service in to countries under embargo
Yes.
How do we know in advance about service downtime by a planned maintenance?
Windows Azure is designed to avoid downtime for customer applications, storage and service management capability during maintenance activities on the Windows Azure platform. Our availability commitment applies to customer applications which use a minimum of two role instances. Customers with single instance applications can learn about Windows Azure best practices for mitigating downtime by reading this MSDN article entry. The Windows Azure SLA is documented here
In the event of an unplanned service disruption on the Windows Azure Platform, status updates will be made
What will be the VAT rate charged for Windows Azure purchases in the EU?
• For VAT purposes, sales of Windows Azure are regarded as the supply of services from Ireland and the place of supply, e.g., where the VAT liability arises, depends on where the customer is located and the VAT status of the customer. Such sales are subject to the following VAT rules:
– If the customer is located in Ireland and does not hold a VAT 13B exemption certificate, Irish VAT at the current rate of 23% will be applied to all invoices. VAT exempt Irish customers will be invoiced at 0% Irish VAT on receipt by MIOL of a valid customer VAT 13B Certificate.
– If the customer is located outside Ireland but within the EU and is VAT registered, 0% Irish VAT will be applied under the reverse charge procedure but only on receipt of the customer’s valid local VAT number during the purchase process.
– If the customer is located outside Ireland but within the EU and is not VAT registered or is VAT registered but does not provide MIOL with a valid VAT number during the purchase process, Irish VAT at the current rate of 23% will be applied.
– If the customer is located outside the EU (except Switzerland), 0% Irish VAT will be applied.
– If the customer is located in Switzerland or Liechtenstein, Swiss VAT at the current rate of 8% will be applied.
• If no VAT number is provided during the purchase process, VAT will be charged as set out above and will appear on each invoice as appropriate. To amend and get a VAT ID added, contact customer support
• Note: Any Irish or Swiss VAT applied may be recoverable from the appropriate tax authority, subject to conditions. Please contact your tax adviser, if required.