Simplify the virtual machine purchasing experience
Select and purchase Azure Reserved VM Instances with a few easy steps in the Azure portal. While Azure Reserved VM Instances requires making upfront commitments on compute capacity, you’ll have options if your business needs change. For example, you may cancel a reserved instance at any time and return the unused balance to Microsoft—up to the yearly limit—for an early termination fee. And after you buy a reserved instance, you can change who manages the reservation or its scope. You can also split a reservation into two and apply some of the instances you purchased to another subscription.

Optimize costs with instance size flexibility
If your business and application requirements are constantly evolving, committing to a virtual machine size for a single upfront payment can be challenging. Optimize costs and spend less time managing reservations with the instance size flexibility setting, which applies the reservation discount to other VMs in the same size group and region. Instant size flexibility applies to both Windows and Linux VMs.

Reserve compute capacity on demand
On-demand capacity reservations enable you to reserve compute capacity for one or more virtual machine size(s) in an Azure region or availability zone for any length of time. Create and cancel an on-demand capacity reservation at any time, with no commitment required. Once deployed, capacity is reserved for your use within the scope of the SLA and ahead of actual VM deployments. Choose on-demand capacity reservations to ensure the availability of your mission-critical applications running on Azure and to meet business continuity and disaster recovery needs. Further reduce costs by combining capacity reservations with Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances.