AVS runs the VMware stack on dedicated Azure infrastructure, but the current price is more than the Azure host rate. Model the separate VCF subscription, three-host floor, network, protection, and migration before you commit.
Budget for two primary software and infrastructure charges: dedicated Azure hosts and a portable VCF subscription purchased from Broadcom. A private cloud has a hard minimum of three hosts. One-year and three-year Azure reserved instances can reduce the infrastructure rate, but network, backup, storage growth, egress, and migration services still belong in the model.
This changed for new capacity on November 1, 2025. Older reserved instances that included VCF may retain that entitlement until their existing term ends. See Microsoft's VCF license portability guidance.
| Cost component | How it works | What to verify |
|---|---|---|
| Azure hosts | Dedicated bare-metal hosts, priced by region and host type | AV36, AV36P, AV48, AV52, or AV64 availability and usable capacity |
| Minimum cluster | Three-host hard minimum | Capacity utilization at launch and after failover headroom |
| VCF subscription | Portable VCF subscription purchased separately from Broadcom for new capacity | Billable cores, term, support, and portability rights |
| Reservation | Azure offers one-year and three-year reserved-instance terms | Coverage, cancellation or exchange terms, growth, and expiry timing |
| Supporting services | ExpressRoute or VPN, backup, public IP, storage, monitoring, egress, and professional services | Which items are in the business case and which remain variable |
Use Microsoft's official AVS pricing page for the current regional host rate. The displayed Azure price excludes the portable VCF subscription, so do not treat the calculator result as the full platform cost.
The rates below are Microsoft's own published US list prices for a single host, in US dollars, taken from the Azure VMware Solution pricing page. Checked August 31, 2026. Azure list prices move, so re-check the source before any of these go into a budget. AV36 is 36 cores, 576 GB RAM, and 18.60 TB of flash. AV36P is 36 cores, 768 GB RAM, and 20.70 TB of all-NVMe flash. Every rate here is the "VCF BYOL" price, which covers the Azure infrastructure and the AVS managed service only. It excludes the portable VCF subscription from Broadcom.
| Host | Region | Pay as you go | 1-year reserved | 3-year reserved |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AV36 | East US | $7.36/hour | Not published | Not published |
| AV36 | Central US | $8.44/hour | Not published | Not published |
| AV36 | South Central US | $9.02/hour | Not published | Not published |
| AV36P | East US | $8.20/hour | $5.51/hour | Not published |
| AV36P | Central US | $8.20/hour | $5.53/hour | Not published |
| AV36P | South Central US | $10.04/hour | $6.81/hour | Not published |
"Not published" means exactly that. As of the date checked, Microsoft's pricing page lists no reserved-instance rate for AV36 in any US region, and no three-year rate for AV36P. If a three-year AV36P commitment matters to your case, ask Microsoft or your partner for a quote rather than assuming the discount pattern from other host types holds.
Larger hosts do publish the full set of terms, which is useful as a sanity check on what reserving actually saves. In East US, AV48 (48 cores, 1.00 TB RAM) is $10.93/hour pay as you go, $7.40/hour on one year, and $4.80/hour on three. AV64 (64 cores, 1.00 TB RAM) is $11.43/hour, $7.60/hour on one year, and $4.79/hour on three, a stated saving of about 58 percent.
A private cloud cannot be smaller than three hosts, so the three-host figure is the real floor, not the single-host rate. The totals below are the published hourly rate multiplied by three hosts and by 730 hours, the average month (8,760 hours divided by 12). Nothing here is estimated: the only input is Microsoft's published rate.
| Three-host cluster, East US | The arithmetic | Azure charge per month |
|---|---|---|
| AV36, pay as you go | 3 × $7.36 × 730 | $16,118.40 |
| AV36P, pay as you go | 3 × $8.20 × 730 | $17,958.00 |
| AV36P, 1-year reserved | 3 × $5.51 × 730 | $12,066.90 |
| AV64, 3-year reserved | 3 × $4.79 × 730 | $10,490.10 |
Read those as the Azure line of the bill and nothing more. They exclude the portable VCF subscription, ExpressRoute or VPN, backup, public IP addresses, storage growth beyond the included flash, egress, monitoring, and migration services. A one-year AV36P reservation at the East US rate works out to $144,802.80 a year in Azure charges before any of those are added.
There is no public list price for the portable VCF subscription. Broadcom publishes the licensing metric but not the money. Its VCF Specific Program Documentation (August 2025) states that VCF is licensed per core with a minimum of 16 core licenses per processor, and that the required number of core licenses equals the number of cores on the server. It contains no dollar figure anywhere. Microsoft's pricing page says the same thing from the other side: the Azure price shown "does not include the VMware VCF portable subscription required from Broadcom."
What that means for your estimate is simple and worth being blunt about. The Azure totals above are one half of a two-part bill, and the second half can only come from a Broadcom quote or a reseller. For a three-host AV36 or AV36P cluster you are licensing 108 cores, since each host carries 36. Get that number quoted in writing before you compare AVS against a renewal or a managed provider, because a comparison built on the Azure figure alone will understate the platform.
| Area | VMware on-prem (Broadcom) | Azure VMware Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | VCF subscription plus hardware, data center, refresh cycles, and operations | Azure hosts with a 3-host minimum, separate portable VCF subscription, and supporting Azure services |
| Complexity | Known quantity | Low, same vSphere/vCenter/NSX stack, Microsoft runs the plumbing |
| Timeline | Renewal-driven | 2–6 months, among the fastest paths here |
| Licensing model | VCF subscription from Broadcom | Azure infrastructure from Microsoft plus portable VCF subscription from Broadcom for new capacity |
| HA / DR features | Full vSphere HA/DRS/SRM under your control | Same stack plus Azure regions for DR; stretched clusters available in select regions |
| Backup ecosystem | Universal vendor support | Veeam, Commvault, Rubrik support AVS; validate appliance placement and egress costs |
| VDI support | Horizon/Omnissa, Citrix | Citrix and Horizon on AVS supported; Azure Virtual Desktop is the Microsoft-preferred answer |
| Container story | Tanzu (bundled) | Adjacent AKS, a stronger, simpler container path than Tanzu |
| Support model | Broadcom for software; your team or partner for infrastructure | Microsoft for AVS infrastructure and service; Broadcom entitlement remains relevant to portable VCF |
| Best fit | Estates with sunk hardware and stable footprints | Azure-committed orgs that need out of the data center fast, with M365/EA leverage |
AVS fits when the primary goal is a fast data center exit, avoidance of a hardware refresh, or proximity to Azure services without re-platforming applications first. It provides vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and vCenter on dedicated Azure infrastructure. VMware administrators retain familiar tools while Microsoft operates the underlying AVS service.
The economic case is strongest when removing facilities and hardware costs has real value, the organization already has Azure network and operations capability, and the estate can use the three-host minimum efficiently. It is weaker when the only goal is to lower a VMware license renewal.
If existing hardware and facilities have useful life, compare AVS against both a direct renewal and a managed VMware provider. A service provider may bundle infrastructure, VMware licensing, operations, backup, and migration differently. Compare like for like: capacity and failover headroom, storage performance, protection, network, egress, support, term, growth, and exit costs.
HCX Enterprise is included with AVS. Select the method by workload scale, change rate, network bandwidth, and acceptable downtime rather than defaulting every VM to live migration.
| HCX method | Downtime profile | Best use |
|---|---|---|
| Cold migration | Longer outage | Small numbers of powered-off workloads |
| HCX vMotion | No application outage in normal operation | Small, serial migration waves |
| Bulk migration | Short cutover outage | Large parallel migration waves |
| Replication-assisted vMotion | No application outage in normal operation | Larger parallel waves that need live cutover |
| OS-assisted migration | Cutover and conversion downtime | Supported non-vSphere sources or special conversion cases |
Before migration, complete landing-zone governance, ExpressRoute or VPN sizing, DNS and identity design, NSX segmentation, IP-retention decisions, dependency mapping, backup placement, and rollback testing. Microsoft's AVS migration architecture documents the HCX choices and scale considerations.
AVS preserves VMware dependencies rather than removing them. A later move to native Azure or another platform is still a second migration. The three-host floor can create unused capacity in smaller estates, while failover headroom can increase the production requirement. Model ExpressRoute, data transfer, backup data paths, public IPs, storage growth, security tooling, migration services, reserved-instance expiry, and the separate VCF renewal. Also validate host-type availability for GPU, very large memory, and storage-heavy workloads in the target region.
AVS can be a low-change path for Azure-committed organizations facing a facility exit or refresh deadline. Build the business case from the Azure host charge, portable VCF subscription, three-host floor, supporting services, and migration plan. If licensing cost is the only problem, price direct renewal and managed VMware alternatives alongside it.
You are exiting a data center or skipping a hardware refresh, Azure is strategic, the estate uses the minimum cluster efficiently, and minimizing application change matters.
Your hardware and facilities have useful life, a license renewal is the only trigger, or the estate cannot use the three-host floor efficiently. Compare a managed VMware provider before deciding.
AVS charges for dedicated Azure hosts, with a hard minimum of three hosts. New capacity also requires a separately purchased portable VCF subscription. Region, host type, term, connectivity, storage, backup, and data transfer affect total cost.
Not for new AVS capacity. Since November 1, 2025, new deployments and additional hosts require a portable VCF subscription purchased from Broadcom. Some previously purchased reserved instances that included VCF can continue under their existing terms until they expire.
HCX Enterprise is included with AVS. Depending on scale and downtime requirements, teams can use cold migration, HCX vMotion, bulk migration, replication-assisted vMotion, or OS-assisted migration.
It can reduce data center, hardware refresh, and operations costs, but it is not automatically cheaper. Compare the Azure host charge, portable VCF subscription, three-host floor, connectivity, storage, backup, egress, migration, and reservation term against the full on-premises cost.
We'll price AVS node economics against managed VMware provider quotes for your actual VM count and tell you which one wins, free, vendor-neutral, no Microsoft or Broadcom reps involved.