Microsoft has announced an Azure price increase taking effect on 1 February 2027 and impact certain Azure Virtual Machine and Azure Storage services in selected regions. [learn.microsoft.com], [learn.microsoft.com]
For most UK firms, the key question is whether any workloads, disaster recovery environments or storage services are hosted outside the UK regions.
Which Regions Are Affected?
Microsoft has announced the following increases:
|
Azure Region |
Increase |
|
North Europe (Dublin) |
17% |
|
France Central |
11% |
|
France South |
11% |
|
West Europe (Amsterdam) |
9% |
|
Norway East |
9% |
|
Norway West |
9% |
|
Southeast Asia (Singapore) |
8% |
For firms using UK South or UK West, these regional increases do not apply directly. However, many organisations still utilise Dublin or Amsterdam for disaster recovery, backup storage, historical deployments, or legacy workloads that pre-date the UK Azure regions.
Which Virtual Machines Are Excluded?
Microsoft has confirmed that the following VM families are excluded from the regional pricing increase:
v1 Series: Bv1, D, Ds, F, Fs, G, Gs, L, NP, HCS
v2 Series: Av2, Amv2, Dv2, Dsv2, Fsv2, Lsv2
v7 Series: Dsv7, Ddsv7, Dlsv7, Dldsv7, Esv7, Edsv7
Microsoft has indicated that VM families not listed among the exclusions are expected to be impacted, meaning many commonly used v4, v5 and v6 D-Series and E-Series virtual machines are likely to see price increases in the affected regions.
There’s Another Increase Firms Should Be Aware Of
Alongside the regional changes, Microsoft is also increasing prices for older v1 and v2 VM series by approximately 25% globally, regardless of region.
This means a firm running older VM families in UK South could still be impacted even though UK regions are not included in the regional increase.
If your environment still contains: Dv2 / Dsv2, Av2, Amv2, Fsv2, Lsv2, it may be worth assessing whether migration to a newer VM family is appropriate before February 2027.
What About Azure Storage?
Microsoft has advised that most Azure Storage services within the affected regions will see the regional increase. However, several services have been excluded, including:
- Azure Queues
- Azure Tables
- General Block Blob
- Standard Page Blob
- Transaction Optimised storage tiers
For organisations maintaining large backup repositories, archive storage or disaster recovery environments in Dublin or Amsterdam, this is likely to be an area worth reviewing ahead of February 2027.
The SAM Club’s Advice
For most firms, the immediate action isn’t to panic about a 9% or 17% increase.
Instead, we recommend understanding:
- Whether any workloads are running in Dublin or Amsterdam
- Whether disaster recovery environments are hosted outside the UK
- Whether backup and archive storage sits within affected regions
- Whether any older v1 or v2 VM families remain in use
- Whether Reserved Instances and Savings Plans still align with current consumption
Many firms will discover that the impact of optimisation opportunities far outweighs the impact of the price increase itself.
Final Thoughts
The good news is that UK South and UK West are not currently included in Microsoft’s regional pricing announcement.
The challenge is that many organisations have Azure resources that extend beyond those regions, particularly for disaster recovery, backup or historical deployments.
Now is a good time to identify where those services are running and understand whether your Azure estate will be affected before the increases arrive in February 2027.