Avi Vantage for Microsoft Azure - License Models

Overview

Avi Vantage supports the following two license models for Azure:

Avi Vantage supports the following two licenses which must be chosen during the cloud creation:

Bring Your Own License (BYOL)

Please obtain the license from your Avi representative, and upload to the Avi Controller. The following license units are available:

  • Cores (vCPUs)
  • Service Engine Bandwidth (25Mbps, 200Mbps, and 1Gbps)

Note: The Avi Controller includes a 30-day, full-featured BYOL trial license.

Azure Pay-as-you-go (Azure PAYG)

When the Azure PAYG license is selected, a license file is not required. The licensing and usage is calculated based on the Service Engines instantiated in Azure.

Usage and billing for the Azure PAYG license are calculated based on the time the SE is in the powered-on state in Azure, in an hourly increment.

The following bandwidth licenses are available:

  • 25Mb (default)
  • 200Mb
  • 1Gb

Note: Avi Vantage 18.1.4 currently supports Azure PAYG as Beta version only. This version should be used in non-production environments only.

Avi Controller’s SKUs in Azure Marketplace

An SKU is the commercial name for a virtual machine image in Azure. Avi Vantage has two Avi Controller SKUs in Azure Marketplace:

  • avi-vantage-adc-byol: Avi Controller Version 17.2.x - BYOL
    • Use the 17.2.x SKU (currently, version 17.2.12) for production environments. The SKU version 17.2.x is currently the preferred, long-term release.
  • avi-vantage-adc-1801: Avi Controller Version 18.1.x - BYOL and PAYG
    • Use the 18.1.x SKU for evaluating Avi’s Azure PAYG licensing. This version is currently available as a Beta support only. It supports both the BYOL and the Azure PAYG license models. The license model should be selected when the Azure cloud is configured.

Note: Both the SKUs are tagged as BYOL in the Azure marketplace as shown below, as there is no software cost associated with the Avi Controller.

license


For more information on these SKUs, refer to Avi Vantage ADC: Load Balancer, GSLB, and WAF.

Service Engine SKUs

In Avi Vantage version 17.2.x through 18.1.3, the Avi Controller creates a Service Engine image as the part of the Azure cloud configuration. This SE image is uploaded into the Azure and used to create SEs.

To reiterate, no Service Engine SKU is present on Azure Marketplace for versions prior to 18.1.3.

Starting with Avi Vantage version 18.1.4, the following new, hidden SE SKUs have been published in the Azure marketplace:

  • avi-vantage-se-1801-byol: This SKU will be used to spin up an SE when the BYOL license model is selected. This SKU does not have a software cost associated with it.
  • avi-vantage-se-1801-payg-bw-25m: This SE SKU will be used to spin up an SE when the PAYG, 25M bandwidth license is selected. This license model is the default for the PAYG licensing. This SKU has a software cost associated with it.
  • avi-vantage-se-1801-payg-bw-200m: This SE SKU will be used to spin up an SE when the PAYG, 200M bandwidth license is selected. This SKU has a software cost associated with it.
  • avi-vantage-se-1801-payg-bw-1000m: This SE SKU will be used to spin up an SE when the PAYG, 1G bandwidth license is selected. This SKU has a software cost associated with it.

These SKUs are instantiated programmatically by the Avi Controller as required and are not intended to be provisioned in any other manner.

Starting with Avi Vantage 18.1.4,

  • When the BYOL license is selected, the avi-vantage-se-1801-byol license is used to create a Service Engine. As this is a BYOL SKU, no software charge will be incurred.
  • When Azure PAYG license is selected, the avi-vantage-se-1801-payg-bw-* SKUs will be used to create a Service Engine. As these SKUs have an hourly cost associated with them, the respective software charge will be incurred and billed directly by Azure.

Sizing Recommendations

For the PAYG licenses, the following are the recommended sizes for an Avi SE:

License Unit Maximum vCPU Allowed for Service Engine Recommended VM Sizes Other Allowed VM Sizes
25M 2 F2s_V2, DS2_v3 Any VM <= 2 vCPUs
200M 4 F4s_v2, DS4_v3 Any VM <= 4 vCPUs
1 G 8 F8s_v2, DS8_v3 Any VM <= 8 vCPUs