Chris Seferlis explains the concept of Azure SQL Database Reserved Capacity:
Last week I posted about the Azure Reserve VM Instance where you could save some money in Azure. Another similar way to save is with Azure SQL Database Reserved Capacity. With this you can save 33% compared to license included pricing by pre-buying SQL Database pre-cores for a 1- or 3-year term.
This can be applied to a single subscription or shared across your enrollments, so you can control how many subscriptions can use the benefit, as well as how the reservation is applied to the specific subscriptions you choose.
The reservation scope to a single subscription allows you to apply it to that SQL Database resource(s) within the selected subscription. A reservation with a shared scope can be shared across subscriptions in the enrollment and there’s some flexibility involved like Managed Instances where you can scale up/down.
Read on for more. AWS had been offering discounts for reserved capacity for a while, but now we’re seeing Microsoft play the game too.