Understanding Azure IaaS Benefits from MSDN Subscriptions

Q: What are the Windows Azure IaaS rights as part of my MSDN subscription?

A: With MSDN subscriptions, you receive numerous benefits including Azure services. The actual amounts vary depending on whether the MSDN subscription is Professional, Premium or Ultimate. The full details can be found at the MSDN benefits site.

To give an idea of what IaaS rights this equates to, let's look at the Ultimate subscription, which offers 1,500 small standard-instance hours. Considering an average month of 30 days has 720 hours,  a small virtual machine (VM) (which has a single dedicated core) that exists all month would use 720 small hours.

This means the MSDN Ultimate subscription would let you run two small VMs all month. The MSDN Premium subscription, which gives 750 hours, would let you run one small VM all month.

Remember VMs consume hours, whether the VM is running or not. During the time the VM exists, it consumes resources, so if you want to save your hours, make sure you delete unused VMs.