Azure Account, Subscription, Support and Billing

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Subscription

Used to create and use Azure services
Created for you when you sign up
📝 Logical container used to provision resources in Azure such as virtual machines, databases and more.
📝 When you create an Azure resource like a VM, you identify the subscription it belongs to
- As you use the VM, the usage of the VM is aggregated and billed monthly.
📝 Each subscription is a separate entity that can’t be merged.

You can create new subscriptions to separate e.g.
- Environments
  - E.g. for testing, security, or to isolate data for compliance reasons.
  - 💡Useful because resource access control occurs at the subscription level.
- Organizational structures
  - E.g. limit a team to lower-cost resources & allow IT department a full range
  - 💡Allows you to manage and control access to the resources that users provision within each subscription
- Billing
  - Costs are first aggregated at the subscription level
    - Manage and track costs based on your needs
  - E.g. for production, development, testing
Or due to subscription limits:
- Subscriptions are bound to some hard limitations
  - E.g. the maximum number of Express Route circuits per subscription is 10

You’ll receive a monthly invoice with payment instructions provided
- You also can get set up for multiple invoices.
Customize billing
- Allows you to e.g. have single invoice for organization but organize charges by department, team, or project.
- Billing structure:
  - Each billing account has billing profile
    - Each billing profile has different invoice sections
      - Each invoice section can be coupled to different subscriptions.
        
        Each invoice section is a line item on the invoice that shows the charges incurred that month

24/7 access to the online documentation, community support, and new Azure capabilities demo videos on YouTube
Demo videos by Azure engineers are available on Azure Friday, Microsoft Mechanics, Azure portal how-to videos playlists
Azure Quickstart Center: Guided experience in the portal.
Azure Service Health: Insights on issues related to your Azure services
Azure Advisor: Personalized recommendations on how to optimize your cost and performance.

Included free for everyone.
Billing and subscription management support
Ability to submit as many support tickets as you need
- Either through • Help + support on top right menu or on resource level (Resource blade -> Support + troubleshooting -> New support request)

Channel	Description
Azure Knowledge Center	The Azure Knowledge Center is a searchable database that contains answers to common support questions.
Microsoft Tech Community	Get support by reading responses to Azure technical questions from Microsoft’s developers and testers.
Stack Overflow	You can review answers to questions from the development community.
Server Fault	Review community responses to questions about System and Network Administration in Azure.
Azure Feedback Forums	Read ideas and suggestions for improving Azure made by Azure users.
Twitter	Tweet `@AzureSupport` to get answers and support from the official Microsoft Azure Twitter channel.

📝 Azure Support plans

	Developer	Standard	Professional Direct
Best for	Non-critical workloads	Production workloads	Business-critical workloads
Reactive technical support	1 business day response	1-hour response for critical cases	1-hour response + priority tracking of critical cases
Proactive technical support	Not applicable	Not applicable	Access to a pool of technical experts

You can also purchase Azure Premier support
- faster response times
- Architecture/code review
- onsite support..