Hey, friends, I'm Scott Hansleman.
This is another episode of Azure Friday.
I'm here with Amber Bhargava, and
we're talking about the new Azure free account.
>> That's correct. >> I remember the very first
time that I signed up for Azure free account.
If I remember I got a couple hundred dollars and
I converted it eventually to a pay as you go account.
>> Yeah, so as you said it's hard.
We used to have the Azure free trial offer.
>> Mm-hm. >> It used to offer $200 credit
for the first 30 days to new Azure customers.
>> Okay. >> Now, it was a good offer, and
we got quite a bit of response from the customers.
But as we started launching more and more Azure services,
the feedback that we got from the customers was,
I need more time to try out Azure, to loan Azure.
That's the reason we created Azure free account.
So, the Azure free account, it's a new offer when you add
your customers which provide them $200 of Azure credits for
the first 40 days.
Last 12 months of most popular Azure service,
we are talking about VMs, SQL database [INAUDIBLE] along with
that they get access to 25 plus all these free services.
So, it's a great offer for
someone who wants to start learning Azure.
>> So if you're a hobbiest,
or a student or you're trying it out for your business, and
you feel like you need a couple of months.
Kicking the tires, having a site up-
>> Yeah.
>> Having a VM up- >> Yeah.
>> In the cloud and running that.
>> So, it's a perfect offer for something like that.
Mm-hm, I do need a credit card, will it be charged?
>> So, all you need is to sign up for
an Azure free account as a phone number and a credit card.
Along with that you need Microsoft account as well.
>> Right. >> But the reason we need phone
number, and credit card is to validate your identity,
is for identity verification.
We really want to ensure that you are a real, or
a genuine Azure user, or not a bot, or
someone who is trying to exploit the offer.
But we will not charge your credit card unless you give us
explicit consent by upgrading your subscription to a pay as
you will subscription.
>> And is this available pretty much everywhere in the world?
>> So, it is available in all the countries where Azure is
available commercially except for Southern Clouds,
which is US command and Azure.
>> Sure, I don't the US government needs a free trial.
>> That's right.
>> that’s cool, so I sign up for the free trial.
But you said that there's new things where I get free access
to Cosmos TV and, you know, they have a free tier as well.
Do I get free websites and free?
>> What you get with the new Azure free account is the credit itself
>> Mm-hm.
>> All the free tiers which you use to get,
you still get all those free tiers of services.
>> Okay. >> And along with that,
there were certain services like VM.
VMs do not have a free tier, or storage didn't have a free tier.
So, what we are doing is we are providing select quantity
of these services as well for free for 12 months.
>> Okay so for 12 months, I get that for free and
then free tier.
This is just for new sign-ups, though, right?
>> That's right.
>> So, if you already have an Azure account,
this is not for you.
>> Yeah, this is not for you, this is just for
new Azure customers, but if you are an existing Azure customer,
as you said, we have free tier of a lot of services.
25 plus always free services that have free tier that you can
use without paying for those services.
>> Just out of curiosity and I don't mean to push this too
hard, but what do I get for free?
Can I do good work, can I do interesting work,
can I have a small blog that I can do for free?
>> So, you can do a lot of stuff, for example,
I give you an example virtual machine.
The latest series of virtual machine to be launched was the B
series the.
And they are offering VM for free with the free account.
If you are talking about SQL Database we offer
of SQL Database.
You can do a lot with SQL Database instance, right?
So, we are offering real quantities which you can
use to do real work on Azure, do your POCs on Azure and whatnot.
>> That's interesting, all right your proofs of concept exactly.
The idea that is interesting,
because I have used a number of small virtual machines.
But they're basically small for very minimal work, but
they're slow all the time >> That's right.
>> With the new B series I can get a little bit of extra power
that I need to do the burst of work that I wanna do.
I've got, for example, a small newsletter that I send out.
It only bursts a couple of hours a day,
a couple of times a month.
It's a perfect example.
>> Yeah, so you can keep on accumulating your credit, and
then borrow it whenever you need more power.
>> What's the experience like when we sign up?
>> Sure so it's very easy to get started,
all you have to do is go to Azure.com/free.
That's a landing page for Azure free account.
>> Cool.
>> You'll find all the information on free account.
What is included, offer terms, FAQs etc.
If you're ready to start then you can
simply click on start free.
Once you do that, you would need a Microsoft account due to sign
up for Azure free account.
If you don't have one, you can easily create one.
It's absolutely free.
In my case, I've already created a Microsoft account, so
let me actually quickly log in to my Microsoft account.
>> And a lot of people who are watching may not realize,
you may already have a Microsoft account.
You may use it for your Hotmail,
you may login to your Xbox with this.
So, if you're a hobbyist, or student, you probably have
a Microsoft account already that you don't realize.
>> So, once you have logged in with your Microsoft account,
you'll be taken to the sign up page for Azure for your account.
And it's a pretty standard sign-up page.
As I said earlier, all you need is a phone number and
credit card.
And the reason we ask for a phone number and
credit card is to validate your identity.
That’s pretty much it, we would not charge your credit card
unless you give us a explicit consent by appearing to be.
>> Okay.
>> So, once you pull this form and click Sign Up,
you'll have your Azure free account.
So, I'm not gonna go through the entire sign up flow, for
the sake of time, but
as soon as you do that you have you're Azure free account.
Now, once you have signed up for Azure free account, you then go
to the Azure portal to start using these free services.
So, in my case I've already signed up for a free account.
So, I'll give you a demo of how the experience
worked in Azure photocopy upon users.
>> Okay. So, this user whose logged
in right now is a real free account user.
>> That's right.
>> You don't have special powers.
>> No, I don't have any special powers.
>> Okay, cool.
>> This is a regular Azure free account.
So, there are two things that I wanna show specifically.
One is how you can easily discover and
create free services on the Azure portal.
And the second thing I wanna show is once you started using
free services, once you started consuming your Azure credit,
how can you keep a tab of it?
How many services I am consuming,
how many services are left.
>> Yeah.
>> All that information, right?
So, let's start with the first one.
So, I'll click on more services,
I'll type free on the search box.
Now, click on free services.
So, this is new Azure free services page and on this page,
this is a single pane of glass where you can find all
the services, which are available for
free with your Azure free account.
It has two sections.
The first sections are service which are free for 12 months.
As I said, these are some of the most popular Azure services.
So, we are offering 750 hours of B1S Windows virtual machine,
750 hours of B1S Linux virtual machine, SQL database,
cross [INAUDIBLE].
>> Wow. >> And these are the services
that you get for free for 12 months.
And if I scroll down, this is the always free services.
These are services which are always free.
As you said right,
free tier of services which are always free for all users.
Currently this link is pointing to Azure.com, but in the future,
we'll have all of these servers listed on this page as well.
So, this will be, what- >> Not to put too fine a point
on it, but I can use, it's not saying you can do just this for
12 months.
I can do all of this, each one- >> That's right.
>> I can sign up for everything and
play with all of these together.
>> That's correct, so you get all of this.
>> That's pretty slick.
>> So, another cool thing about this page is that along with
showing all the services which available for free,
we have these create buttons.
And what we have done is for some of the services,
we have created custom templates, or custom experience,
which make it very easy for you to create these free services.
For example,
if you want to create a free Windows Virtual Machine,
you have to select the right region.
We have the as available.
You have to select the right size of VM,
you have to select the right monitors.
It’s not that difficult, but what we have done is,
we have customized the experience which very easy for
you as a new user to create this services.
So I'll give an example of that.
So, let's take an example,
we wanna create a free Windows virtual machine.
>> All right. >> I'll click on create here.
That will take me to a custom create experience for
free virtual machine.
As you can see, it's saying free account virtual machines, and
I just have to enter six, or seven fields to create a VM.
>> That's really exciting, because I have noticed that when
I was first getting started with Azure, and
I make a new virtual machine there are more options here, and
a huge pricing section.
>> That's right. >> And I don't wanna
accidentally pick the wrong thing.
>> That’s right. >> I'm just browsing.
>> That's correct, so
this custom experience makes it super easy.
All the variables that you have to select to create a free VM
are pre-selected in this custom template.
So, let me quickly query a free VM.
So the VM name I can select an image if I'm provisioning or
creating a Windows server I can select a Windows server image
if I want a provisional Linux VM as I said we
also offer Linus VMS route.
So if I wanna select a Linux VM if I wanna create a Linux VM I
can select the next image.
In this case because we are provisioning of Windows VM,
select windows images Windows Server 2016 data center.
I'll pick a location where I wanna deploy this VM.
Username, password, confirm the password.
Next I will select the subscription which was
created when I signed up for a free account,
this is the free trial subscription.
I'll create a new resource group.
The location for the resource group, I'll click on OK.
It runs on validations.
And once the validations are done, I'll click on OK.
And just like that, I have a few Windows virtual machine.
>> And this virtual machine, I can go into the billing section
and I can see that predictive line that shows me how much it's
gonna spend or how much it would cost.
>> So it takes some time for the [INAUDIBLE] for
the billing system.
>> Okay. >> But eventually,
you will see that in the billing there are the subscription blade
and I'll give a demo of that later as well.
>> That's yeah, that's fantastic.
Because being, we don't wanna be, we the free people.
>> Mm-hm, mm-hm. >> Don't want you to think that
we're being cheap.
We're just being careful.
>> Okay. >> And we're being thoughtful,
cuz we really wanna understand how to effectively evaluate
Azure until we're prepared to start paying.
>> That is correct.
So that was the free service page where you can
just go in and create free services.
The next thing I wanna show is the Cost Management
functionality for free account users.
>> Mm-hm. >> So I'll click on
Cost Management.
>> I'll take on subscriptions.
I'll choose the subscription which got created when I signed
up for free account.
It's free trial in my case and this is the subscription blade
which has all the information on cost and usage.
So the top, at the very top there's a banner which basically
shows you when your free credit is expiring.
In my case it is expiring in six days.
>> Right and it's very clear.
>> That's very clear, right.
Then below that you have very information about
the subscription like the subscription name,
billing period, etc.
Now if I scroll down this is the cost by resource chart.
So this chart will have information about all
the services which I have used which are not included for free.
>> Mm-hm.
>> So any service.
For example,
if I spin up a service which is not included for free.
This service would show up here.
And I can check which services are consuming my Azure credit.
>> Nice. >> So that's
the information that you can gather from this chart.
Currently because it's a new account I don't have any usage.
It's not showing a lot of services here, but
as you start using these services,
all those services will starting showing up here.
>> Right within a day or
two it'll start flowing through the system.
The next chart is the spending rate and the forecast chart.
This is a pretty cool chart.
So it shows you your credit,
what is the credit that you have of the [INAUDIBLE] right now?
>> Mm-hm. >> How much of that credit have
you used so far, so it's showing me that I haven't used anything,
so I have my entire $200 in tax.
>> Nice.
>> And it also shows you the forecast expense, so
the end of the month.
How much of my credit will I consume?
>> This is super useful and I love this chart and
when it starts seeing the forecasted spend I immediately
pin that to my home screen and
I encourage everyone to do that to.
Really get a sense of not just how much money you're spending
but how Azure uses your money in its computer resources.
>> That's correct.
>> And if I scrolled on further, this is a chart which gives you
information about the usage on free services, right?
So the first column on this chart is essentially the service
itself, the middle name or the service name.
>> Mm-hm. >> The second column is usage
and limit.
So it tells you how much of the quantity is included for
free for that service?
>> Okay. >> And how much of that free
quantity have I consumed?
In my case as I said, right.
This is a new account.
I haven't used a lot.
And how much of that free quantity have I consumed?
So that status bar will start filling.
And the last column is status.
So basically based on your pattern,
it could use an Aurora thing to predict whether you're gonna
exceed the limit for that free service.
>> That's so useful, I mean it can't be any clearer.
>> Mm-hm. >> People are always afraid
they're gonna wake up and
then its gonna cost them a thousand dollars.
>> That's right. >> You've got a progress bar.
>> Mm-hm. >> You've got a used and
left, and you've got even a prediction in plain English.
>> That's right.
>> Or plain whatever language you speak.
>> That's right.
>> Likely to exceed, unlikely to exceed.
It couldn't be clearer, and
honestly it's just trying to be very transparent,
about how you're gonna spend your money in Azure.
>> That's right. >> That's pretty slick.
>> That's correct.
So using this page, you can easily keep a tab of your
average usage and ensure that you are optimizing
the benefits that you get with career cards.
This is pretty cool.
Is this in preview or is this now?
>> This is live right now.
So as a new user you can go in and you can sign up for
an Azure free account.
>> So, if you happen to bump into Azure Friday or
you have a family, or friend, or a co-worker, or
someone who hasn't had a great experience in Azure they
can sign up now, azure.com/free.
>> Yeah.
>> Fantastic.
I am learning all about the new Azure free account here
on Azure Friday.
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