Every instance that is protected with Azure Site Recovery is free for the first 31 days of protection. From the 32nd day onwards, protection for the instance is charged at the rates above.

Yes, it does not matter how long you have been using Azure Site Recovery. Every protected instance incurs no Azure Site Recovery charges for the first 31 days. For example, if you have been protecting 10 instances for the last 6 months and you connect an 11th instance to Azure Site Recovery, there will be no Azure Site Recovery charges for the 11th instance for the first 31 days. The first 10 instances continue to incur Azure Site Recovery charges since they have been protected for more than 31 days.

Yes, even though Azure Site Recovery is free during the first 31 days of a protected instance, you might incur charges for Azure Storage, storage transactions, and data transfer. A recovered virtual machine might also incur Azure compute charges.

When you use Site Recovery, you incur charges for the Site Recovery license, Azure storage, storage transactions, and outbound data transfer.

1. The Site Recovery license is per protected instance, where an instance is a virtual machine or a physical server.
2. Storage cost is incurred for the Site Recovery replica of storage in the target location. A snapshot taken on this replica storage is used to create a new target storage disk upon test failover or failover. Overall storage cost is hence, based on replica of storage and the number of disaster recovery drills conducted in a year.
3. Storage transactions are charged during steady-state replication and for regular virtual machine operations after a failover or test failover.
4. Outbound data transfer cost is also called as egress and is charged only when the traffic leaves an Azure region. Hence, these charges are applied when you replicate an Azure virtual machine from one region to another. Azure Site Recovery compresses the data before you transfer. Hence, egress is charged for the compressed replication data.
5. Recovery points created by Site Recovery are snapshots taken for the replica storage. These snapshots are charged based on the consumed capacity. For more information, see Managed Disks pricing.
6. Costs are also incurred for the virtual machine compute capacity and is only applied at the time of test failover and failover. This cost is usually zero provided there’s no active disaster recovery drill or no actual disaster.
7. For Azure virtual machine protection, Site Recovery mimics the source storage type on target side. For example, if you protect a virtual machine in Azure with disks in storage accounts, then Site Recovery uses a storage account in the target side to store replication data. In another case, if a virtual machine in Azure uses managed disks, then Site Recovery creates an ASR replica disk in the target that corresponds to each source disk.
8. For VMware/physical machines, Site Recovery creates an ASR replica disk in the target that corresponds to each source disk. All new replications from March 2019 onwards use managed disks for both replication and failovers. Managed disk cost is computed on provisioned capacity. For more information, see Managed Disks pricing.
9. For Hyper-V machines, Site Recovery creates and uses a storage account for replication. By default, the test failover or failover happens on a storage account. However, it provides an option to failover to managed disks if required. In this case, managed disks are created at the time of failover.

The Azure Hybrid Benefit helps you get the most value from licenses on-premises and in the cloud. It lets you use your Windows Server licenses with Software Assurance for virtual machines at the base compute rate, resulting in up to 40 percent savings or more across all Azure regions. Use your Hybrid Benefit while migrating your Windows servers to Azure. Learn more.

See Azure Site Recovery frequently asked questions.

Licensing Microsoft Server products for disaster recovery

It's important to note that when an instance protected by Azure Site Recovery is recovered at the recovery site, the software running inside the protected instance must be properly licensed as well. The end customer needs to license Microsoft server products as follows, depending on the recovery site selected.

The servers need to be fully licensed with Windows Server licenses. If the customer has active Software Assurance coverage on their Windows Server at the primary site, they may deploy Windows Server at the secondary site through the Disaster Recovery Software Assurance benefit for non-production disaster recovery purposes only. Consult the Product Use Rights (PUR) to determine if customer usage meets the Disaster Recovery Software Assurance benefit criteria.

These servers can be licensed with separate licenses at the secondary site or through the Disaster Recovery Software Assurance benefit, if the customer qualifies for this benefit.

Windows Server should be licensed via your Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA).

Windows Server can be licensed via your SPLA agreement or via the end customer’s license if they qualify for the Disaster Recovery Software Assurance benefit.

These server products should be licensed via your SPLA on the basis in which the servers are normally licensed in SPLA (Per Core, Per User, and so on).

These servers can be licensed via your SPLA or via the end customer’s license if they qualify for the Disaster Recovery Software Assurance benefit.

Azure Hybrid Benefit is applicable to all customers with active Software Assurance and can be activated in Azure regardless of how Azure is being procured (Enterprise Agreement, Cloud Solution Provider, and others).

License Mobility and Azure Hybrid Benefit require Software Assurance and therefore do not apply to SPLA. The service provider should refer to their SPLA contracts about terms and conditions of the agreement.

The Disaster Recovery Software Assurance benefit applies to Microsoft server products protected with Azure Site Recovery. This change was made in the January 2015 Product Use Rights.

If a customer is using Azure Site Recovery to migrate Microsoft server products (for example, SQL Server) from a service provider to Azure, the customer would need to have their own Software Assurance and use License Mobility.

Yes, test recoveries are limited to brief periods of disaster recovery testing within one week every 90 days.

Azure Site Recovery replication for SQL Server is covered under the Software Assurance – Disaster Recovery benefit, for all Azure Site Recovery scenarios (on-premises to Azure disaster recovery, or cross-region Azure IaaS disaster recovery).

Use of any other high availability technology for SQL Server, for example, failover clustering, or replication technology, such as SQL Always On Availability Groups, database mirroring, and log shipping, is bound by the following SQL Server licensing guidelines - the first passive database instance (typically for local high availability) is covered by the Software Assurance license of the primary database. Any additional passive database instances (for disaster recovery, say in a remote on-premises data center or in any cloud) need additional SQL Server licenses. If the primary SQL instance is on dedicated hardware, the first passive instance is covered by the Software Assurance license on dedicated hardware, and not on shared hardware. If the primary SQL instance is on shared hardware, then the first passive instance is covered on shared hardware. Read the SQL Server Licensing guide for more information.

Azure is broadly certified to run SAP solutions on Azure—both current generation platform (NetWeaver) and next generation platform (HANA). The certifications that SAP issues are based on a combination of Business Application (SAP product), Guest OS, and relational database management systems. Learn more. Additional details can be found in SAP Notes on the SAP Support Portal.

Oracle provides license mobility for customers who want to run Oracle software on Microsoft Azure. See Licensing Oracle Software in the cloud computing environment. Oracle’s partnership with Microsoft enables customers to deploy Oracle software in Microsoft public and private clouds with the confidence of certification and support from Oracle. You can refer the Oracle Data Recovery Licensing paper for details.

Please refer to the licensing terms of your third-party application.

Azure does not support persistent MAC addresses, and so software with MAC based license models can't be used for both on-premises to Azure migration or disaster recovery.