Microsoft Azure

Northwestern provides access to Microsoft Azure via a direct agreement with Microsoft. The Northwestern Azure contract offers the following benefits:

• Direct billing to chart strings in NUFinancials
• A Business Associates Agreement (BAA), a requirement for HIPAA-compliant environments
• Discounts up to 10% for Azure services
• Access to the CloudCheckr platform for cost management and inventory reporting
• A waiver of Azure data egress fees for most applications
• Access to the Premier Azure support plan

In order to receive these benefits, Azure subscriptions owned by Northwestern units must be created via the Public Cloud Account Request.

Azure Dev/Test subscriptions are also available, which offer substantial discounts for non-production workloads. For more details, please see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/dev-test/.

Accessing Microsoft Azure

To access the Microsoft Azure portal, log in at https://portal.azure.com/ with your Northwestern credentials.

Getting Support

Northwestern IT does not provide support for Azure accounts. As part of Northwestern’s agreement with Microsoft, all Azure subscriptions at Northwestern have access to the Premier support plan, which provides 24x7 access to support engineers and unlimited support cases.

To open a support request, go to the Help + support section of the Azure Portal, click the “New support request” link, and select your Northwestern subscription when prompted.

Resources

The following are resources available to Northwestern community members using or considering Azure.

Northwestern Cloud Community of Practice

All IT practitioners across Northwestern with an interest in cloud computing are invited to join the Cloud Community of Practice. Staff members currently working with cloud resources or responsible for workloads in the public cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform) are especially welcome to share their experiences, questions, and challenges with the group. The primary channel for this community is the Teams space: CoP -Cloud. Membership is open to anyone with a Northwestern NetID.

Education and Training Opportunities

The Northwestern Cloud Community of Practice maintains a list of in-person and online training opportunities and resources here: https://cloud.northwestern.edu/resources/training/.