Glossary & FAQ
Common terminology used across the quota and capacity management guides. Each entry links to the authoritative Microsoft documentation so you're never guessing which article to cite.
Glossary
- Capacity and billing operations: Unified concept for estate-level capacity planning, quota governance, capacity reservations, and Azure billing models (EA and MCA), aligned with Well-Architected capacity planning, workload supply chain guidance, and the FinOps Framework. See capacity and billing operations for the full reference.
- Capacity reservation group (CRG): A logical container that holds one or more on-demand capacity reservations for specific VM sizes, regions, and zones. CRGs guarantee capacity and can be shared across subscriptions.
- Capacity reservation: A compute object that reserves capacity for a specific VM size in a region or availability zone, managed through a capacity reservation group, as described in the on-demand capacity reservations overview. Capacity reservations protect supply but do not change pricing on their own.
- Azure Reservation: A pricing construct that applies term-commitment discounts to eligible compute usage over one- or three-year terms, as described in the FinOps rate optimization guidance and Azure Reservations documentation. Azure Reservations reduce cost but do not guarantee capacity.
- Azure savings plan: A flexible pricing construct that applies discounts to eligible compute usage across services and regions over a fixed term, as described in Azure savings plan for compute. Savings plans optimize rates but do not guarantee capacity.
- FinOps Hubs: Data pipeline infrastructure from the FinOps Toolkit that ingests cost and usage data into Azure Data Explorer via Data Factory. Hubs support KQL queries against normalized cost data using the FOCUS schema.
- Quota group: An Azure Resource Manager object created under a management group that aggregates compute quota across eligible subscriptions, allowing transfers and group-level increase requests.
- Logical availability zone: Subscription-specific mapping to physical datacenter zones; mappings can differ across subscriptions and must be queried via Azure Resource Manager APIs.
- Quota alert: An Azure Monitor alert triggered when quota usage crosses a configured threshold in the My quotas experience.
- Budget alert: A Cost Management alert generated when actual or forecasted spend exceeds defined budget thresholds.
- Subscription request: Workflow that allows an MCA billing owner to create a subscription for a user or service principal in another tenant, requiring the recipient to accept ownership.
FAQ
When should we request a region access ticket instead of increasing quota? Quota groups and standard increases manage capacity within already-enabled regions. If the subscription cannot deploy to a specific region because access is restricted, submit a region access support request.
How do we recycle a subscription without losing zone enablement? Reclaim quota and billing ownership but keep the subscription active. Zone access flags remain in place; deleting the subscription may require repeating the access request workflow for future projects.
What is the difference between capacity reservations, reserved instances, and savings plans? Capacity reservations ensure availability of specific VM capacity in a region or availability zone through capacity reservation groups. Azure Reservations and Azure savings plans provide pricing discounts over a defined term, as described in FinOps rate optimization guidance, but they do not guarantee capacity.
Do quota alerts and budget alerts require different permissions? Quota alerts rely on Azure Monitor alert permissions (Reader or higher on the subscription), while budget alerts follow Cost Management RBAC (Owner, Contributor, Cost Management roles). Configure both to ensure quota usage and cost trends reach the right stakeholders.