In a recent blog post, Microsoft announced new updates to its Dedicated Host service in Azure. The public cloud vendor made several updates to the service, such as cost-saving reservations, maintenance control, further options with SKUs, and Resource Health alerts.
Azure Dedicated Host service provides a single-tenant physical server to allow customers to host their Azure virtual machines for Windows and Linux without sharing the capacity with others. Moreover, customers can choose their server type, including CPU, RAM or others for an Azure Virtual Machine (VM) and deploy it on a dedicated host. Microsoft launched the Dedicated Hosts in preview last year in August and made the service generally available at the end of the year.
Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/dedicated-hosts
With the recent updates, dedicated customers can benefit from costs savings when buying Azure reservations for Dedicated Hosts. According to the blog post by Ziv Rafalovich principal program manager, Azure Compute:
The reservation discount is applied automatically to the number of running dedicated hosts that match the reservation scope and attributes. You don't need to assign a reservation to a specifically dedicated host to get the discounts.
Furthermore, the updates include maintenance control for Dedicated Hosts giving customers more control over platform maintenance operations with highly sensitive workloads – which means that customers can manage platform updates that don't require a reboot. The maintenance control feature also allows batch updates, combining updates into one update package with the option to delay and apply those updates within a 35-day rolling window.
Another update involves the addition of Resource Health alerts. These alerts can notify customers in "near real-time" when their dedicated hosts experience a change concerning their health status. Azure System administrators can create these Resource Health alerts using an Azure Resource Manager Template. Furthermore, they can create an action group and specify the steps to take once an alert is triggered.
Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-dedicated-host-new-capabilities-and-benefits
Other leading cloud vendors like Amazon and Google also offer similar services. Amazon, for instance, offers EC2 Dedicated Hosts, which enables customers to bring their software running under existing licenses from vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle to the AWS ecosystem. Google provides sole-tenants nodes on Google Compute Engine, providing dedicated purposes. Both Amazon and Google also offer discounts on these services.
Lastly, since the preview of Dedicated Hosts, Microsoft added support for various VM series and host types. Currently, there is support for both Intel and AMD SKUs with a variety of VM series: Dsv3, Esv3, Dasv4, Easv4, Fsv2, Lsv2, and Msv. Moreover, on the pricing page for Dedicated Hosts, customers can find the complete list of Dedicated Hosts SKUs, their CPU information, and various pricing options, including Azure reservations discounts.