Microsoft-Azure-Handbook.pdf?ocid=aff-n-we-loc--ITPRO40886&WT

5. Microsoft Azure for Test & Development
Why use Microsoft Azure for Test and Development?
Microsoft Azure Platform - enables you to develop and test applications faster, at reduced cost, and with the flexibility to deploy in the cloud or on-premises.
MSDN – Provides you with free monetary credits and software
Visual Studio / Visual Studio Online – A phenomenal integration story
No Charge for stopped VMs
Pay by the Minute Billing
MSDN Use Rights
Heavily Discounted MSDN Dev/Test
Rates
As of June 2013, you no longer need to delete VMs to stop charges. Simply stop the VM, and we preserve the deployment state and configuration, but also
stop charging.
We are billing at a per-minute granularity. So if you run a VM (or Cloud Service, or Web Site, or Mobile Service) for only 6 minutes in an hour, we now only
charge you for the actual 6 minutes of compute usage
MSDN dev/test software licenses (e.g. SQL Server, SharePoint, BizTalk, etc) can now be used in Azure.
There is a new billing rate for customers who have MSDN subscriptions. You can now spin up any number of Windows Server, SQL Server, SharePoint Server,
and BizTalk Server VMs for Dev/Test scenarios using Microsoft Azure and get up to 40% off
MSDN Monetary Credits
Every MSDN subscribergets up to $150 per month of Azure monetary credits that can be used for Dev/Test purposes.
Portal Support for Tracking MSDN
Monetary Credit Usage
Microsoft Azure customers to track their monetary credit usage. The top of the Microsoft Azure Management Portal now includes “Credit Status UI” that
enables customers to quickly check their current status
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