Azure Dedicated Host.

With Azure Dedicated Host, you can control the support window, gain visibility over the underlying infrastructure, and place your Azure VMs on a single tenant server to satisfy specific compliance or regulatory requirements.

Azure Dedicated Host is a service that provides physical servers – able to host one or more virtual machines – dedicated to one Azure subscription. Dedicated hosts are the same physical servers used in our data centers, provided as a resource.

You can provision dedicated hosts within a region, availability zone, and fault domain. Then, you can place VMs directly into your provisioned hosts, in whatever configuration best meets your needs.

Reserving the entire host provides the following benefits:

Hardware isolation at the physical server level. No other VMs will be placed on your hosts. Dedicated hosts are deployed in the same data centers and share the same network and underlying storage infrastructure as other, non-isolated hosts.

Control over support events initiated by the Azure platform. While the majority of support events have little to no impact on your virtual machines, there are some sensitive workloads where each second of pause can have an impact. With dedicated hosts, you can opt in to a support window to reduce the impact to your service.

Simplify the deployment of business-critical applications in a single-tenant environment. Increase control and scalability, without limiting your options. Deploy Windows, Linux, and SQL Server virtual machines on Azure. Select the server and CPU type, number of cores, and additional features. The underlying hosts you provision are single-tenant and dedicated to your Azure VMs and workloads. You determine the timing of all platform-initiated maintenance operations, such as OS patching, or hardware or software restarts. Select Azure VM sizes and operating systems on the same host.

Comply with corporate policies and industry-specific standards by taking advantage of the certifications Azure offers. Place your Azure VMs on a dedicated hosting server that runs only your organization’s workloads to meet corporate compliance guidelines and standards. Get insights on the underlying cores to meet server-based software licensing requirements.

With the Azure hybrid benefit, you can bring your own licenses for Windows and SQL to Azure. Using the hybrid benefits provides you with additional benefits.

Use your on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance benefits, or subscriptions with equivalent rights, when you migrate your workloads to Dedicated Host. Azure hybrid benefit licensing terms are available only on Azure. You’ll also get free extended security updates for Windows Server and SQL Server 2008/2012 and 2008/2012 R2.

Apply your existing Windows Server Datacenter or SQL Server Enterprise edition licenses to the physical cores available to you on the host, utilize dual-use rights while migrating from on premises, and get unlimited virtualization rights.

Azure dedicated hosts are single tenant whereas an Azure VM is multi-tenant. Multi-tenant has multiple organizations sharing the same resources. Single-tenant is dedicated to one organization.

Multi-tenant Azure VMs are more cost effective but less secure than Azure dedicated hosts. In a multi-tenant system, the risks are higher because resources are shared by multiple customers. If one customer’s data is compromised, it is more likely that it will affect other customers, unlike in a single-tenant cloud where security incidents are isolated to a single client.

Single-tenant Azure dedicated hosts are more expensive but offer greater support control and security than multi-tenant Azure VMs. For regulated or sensitive data, the single tenancy of Azure dedicated hosts is a better choice.

A single tenant architecture may be suited for specific industries or sectors where there are strong privacy and security concerns around customer data. Good examples are the healthcare and finance industries.

In the healthcare industry, for example, applications must meet HIPAA requirements when dealing with patient information. So each hospital may need to have its own data center onsite to ensure compliance. The same applies to certain types of financial data.

Get a dedicated physical server to host and deploy your Azure VMs for Windows or Linux.

Azure Dedicated Servers host one or more Azure virtual machines. Your Azure server is dedicated to your organization and workloads—capacity isn’t shared with other customers. This host-level isolation helps address compliance requirements. As you provision the host, you gain visibility into and control over the placement of your Azure VMs, and you determine the host’s support policies.

• Features Dedicated Host SKUs with the number of processors, VM series, and VM sizes you need
• Offers pricing and benefits for Windows Server and SQL Server available only on Azure

An Azure dedicated host allows your organization to establish a private cloud in Azure.

Also called an internal or corporate cloud, private cloud computing gives businesses many of the benefits of a public cloud – including self-service, scalability, and elasticity – with the additional control and customization available from dedicated resources over a computing infrastructure hosted on-premises. In addition, private clouds delivered via Azure dedicated hosts offer a higher level of security and privacy through both company firewalls and internal hosting to ensure operations and sensitive data are not accessible to third-party providers.

One drawback is that the company’s IT department is held responsible for the cost and accountability of managing the private cloud. So private clouds require the same staffing, management, and maintenance expenses as traditional datacenter ownership.

Two models for cloud services can be delivered in a private cloud. The first is infrastructure as a service (IaaS) that allows a company to use infrastructure resources such as compute, network, and storage as a service. The second is platform as a service (PasS) that lets a company deliver everything from simple cloud-based applications to sophisticated-enabled enterprise applications. Private clouds can also be combined with public clouds to create a hybrid cloud, allowing the business to take advantage of cloud bursting to free up more space and scale computing services to the public cloud when computing demand increases.

Using single-tenant dedicated Azure hosts simplifies troubleshooting for your IT team, Microsoft Unified Support, or a third-party support provider.

MS Azure dedicated servers allow Microsoft support experts direct access to the hardware level – in many cases there is no need to open a tenant case with Microsoft.

Dedicated Azure increases uptime with dedicated server resources while decreasing support ticket Time to Resolution (TTR) facilitated by dedicated server control and access.

• Simplify troubleshooting with single-tenant dedicated Azure host
• Decrease TTR for your own IT team or third-party support

Dedicated Host is charged at the host level regardless of the number of Azure VMs you run on the host.

Software licenses are billed separately from compute resources at a VM level based on usage.

Use Azure hybrid benefits for additional savings, if you’re eligible. Estimate the costs for your Dedicated Host with the pricing calculator.

Azure Dedicated HSM is a single-tenant HSM server. Dedicated HSM delivers tamper-proof crypto key operations and FIPS compliance on Azure.

A Hardware Security Module (HSM) is a physical computing device used to safeguard and manage cryptographic keys. Keys stored in HSMs can be used for cryptographic operations. The key material stays safely in tamper-resistant, tamper-evident hardware modules. The HSM only allows authenticated and authorized applications to use the keys. The key material never leaves the HSM protection boundary.

Learn more about Azure Dedicated HSM and how it works with your Azure dedicated hosts.