(Classic) MyCloudIT Pricing Guide

This article refers to the MyCloudIT Gen 2 platform, which was launched in 2015. Look for MyCloudIT Gen 3 to be launched in early 2021.

Overview

This guide will help you understand the pricing structure of the MyCloudIT platform and different ways to optimize your RDS delivery costs. Check out 3 detailed examples to see how you can save more with MyCloudIT.

Pricing Overview

With MyCloudIT, there are 3 components to be considered when pricing out a solution:

• Azure runtime costs – These costs vary based on monthly consumption and are typically the most significant of the costs, but we will share a few strategies that can be leveraged to manage this (see section 2). You can either bring your own Azure subscription or purchase directly from MyCloudIT at 10% discount off the retail Azure pricing.
• MyCloudIT license fee – $8/ user/ month.
• Remote Desktop Services License – $6.00/user/month or bring your own RDS SALs or RDS CALs + SA.

Optional: Office 365 License – If you already own Office 365, or want to purchase it, we can add Office 365 to your RDS deployment.

Strategies to Save Costs

1. Reduce the Runtime to Meet the Business Needs
MyCloudIT offers several strategies to reduce runtime costs for your deployments. The most impactful cost savings tool is our Resource Scheduler. Our Scheduler lets you schedule the startup and shutdown of either your complete deployment or just specific VMs in your deployment. This is most beneficial when you know there are times when your workload is not needed.

For example: Let’s assume there are 22 working days in a 31-day month and we want to run our VMs 12 hours a day (7am – 7pm), during the workweek (Monday – Friday). With Azure, you only pay for runtime costs while your VMs are running; so, if you can reduce your VM runtime cost from a 24×7 (744 hours/month) to 264 hours/month (7am – 7pm, Monday – Friday), you will realize significant savings on your Azure consumption costs while still providing a full level of service when needed.

2. Enable Auto-scaling on Your Deployments
You can enable auto-scaling for your deployments, this will enable your subscription to only use the number of session hosts required to support the concurrent user count of your deployment. This is useful if your users do not constantly use the cloud-based deployment, but need quick access either during scheduled times, or 24×7.

3. Purchase RDS SALs versus RDS CALs + SA
Each user is required to have a Remote Desktop Services License. The licenses come in two forms; RDS SALs, which we can resell, and RDS CALs + SA that you must purchase from your software reseller.

• RDS SAL – You can purchase your Subscriber Access License from MyCloudIT for a monthly cost of $6.00/user /month. This is useful if you want to maintain a OPEX only cost model or if your user count varies from month to month.
• RDS CAL + SA – You can also purchase an RDS CAL with Software Assurance from your software reseller. This is a one-time purchase price per user, and if you maintain Software Assurance on your CALs, you will be able to use it for cloud-based deployments. Please contact your software reseller for pricing options on RDS CALs + SA.

Pricing Examples

We’ll show three examples of three different deployment scenarios. In each example, we’ll estimate the total monthly costs in 2 scenarios:

1. Running the servers 24/7 = 744 hours/month.
2. Running the servers during business hours, i.e. 22 working days/month x 12 hours/day = 264 hours/month.

All runtime costs are based on the Azure South Central Region as of 6/13/2017 and do not include storage costs. 1 TB of storage is approximately $51.20 / month.

Example #1: 8 Users

Basic Remote Apps deployment only supports a single collection and does not support auto-scaling.

Example #2: 24 users

Domain-Joined Remote Apps deployment requires an existing Windows Server Active Domain controller that is not included in the costs.

Example #3: 56 users