This tutorial focuses on the built-in Microsoft Licensing Framework and the billing section.
Step 1: Choosing an image from the drives library
If you navigate to the drives library you will notice that some images require licenses. This mainly applies to Microsoft distributions. For example, you can see in the screenshot below the licenses and dependencies for Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Enterprise, Standard and Web editions.
Once you choose a Windows image, you can clone it to “My Drives” to create a private copy and then attach that drive to the VM.
Step 2: Purchase the required Microsoft licenses
Once you’ve attached the drive to your VM, go to the Software Licenses tab to check the licenses required. Here you will see the licenses listed. You are now able to purchase the missing licenses and set the quantity and duration.
Step 3: Usage & Billing
On the Usage & Billing page customers can view the consumption of all the major resources, additional services and the Microsoft licensing.
Cloud Adore powered by Cloud Sigma supports on demand and subscription based consumption of computing resources. In the case of on-demand resource consumption, the cloud billing system monitors usage per compute resource (i.e. CPU, RAM, storage etc.) and compares this against the end user’s subscribed resource level. This check is conducted every five minutes. The billing system then charges the user for any resource consumption amount above the subscribed level in five minute segments. This reduces wastage as the system looks at each resource individually based on resources consumed at that point. We do not charge for CPU and RAM from powered off virtual machines.
Customers can use the Usage & Purchasing section to get an idea of their resource consumption over time and make adjustments as needed. For example, in the screenshot below, both CPU and RAM are bursting 14Ghz and 21GB respectively. Those amounts can be purchased as subscriptions as shown, to take advantage of the discounted price.
If the customer does not have sufficient credit to cover the purchase an alert will appear as in the screenshot below.
If the customer wishes to add funds they can simply click the Add Funds button and they will be able to make the payment either by credit/debit card or by bank transfer.
