A new addition to the July 2023 Product Terms is Microsoft Dev Box. This is an Azure services that provides pre-configured, project-specific virtual workstations for developers.
Licensing
Dev Box must be used “to design, develop, or test applications” and users need to be licensed with:
- Windows 10/11 Enterprise
- Intune
- Azure Active Directory P1/P2 (now Entra ID)
These can be licensed individually or as part of:
- Microsoft 365 F3/E3/G3/E5/G5/A3/A5/Business Premium
Microsoft prohibit using “the service to perform server functions to devices outside of the service or to third parties” and also “for sustained distributed computing or digital asset transaction validation workloads“.
The “Azure Customer Solution” clause in the Azure General Terms:
“Customer may create and maintain a Customer Solution. Despite anything to the contrary in Customer’s licensing agreement, Customer may permit third parties to access and use the Microsoft Azure Services solely in connection with the use of that Customer Solution.”
does not apply.
Pricing
Where there will be high ongoing usage, the Max Monthly Price makes sense but for shorter/more variable scenarios, the Hourly Compute price will likely be more effective.
The storage cost is paid each month until the Dev Box is deleted, so make sure to keep an eye on old, unused instances as that can soon start to add up across a large organisation!
See more info here.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 