MCT – Utilize Azure free credits with Microsoft 365 Dev tenant

Microsoft MCT

Congratulations on earning Microsoft MCT certification. Feel proud to be certified as this is one of the most valuable certification among other industry certifications. As you may already aware achieving MCT certification grants you an exclusive access to connect with technology experts, training materials (Azure, O365, etc), discounts on exams and many more.

Visual Studio Subscription Benefits

Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription is one the benefits that you get as part of the MCT program. This provides whole lot of access to several Microsoft products. If you are a fan of Azure like me, you would have immediately noticed the Azure $150/ £115 monthly credit and Microsoft 365 Developer subscription (E5) in the portal.

Once you’ve logged into to my.visualstudio.com with your account associated to MCT program to explore the benefits, you can see several Microsoft products available for you.

When you activate the Azure free credits subscription, you can link your existing Azure account and get subscribed otherwise setup a new Azure account to proceed further. This new subscription will be linked with your ‘default directory’ in your azure account. New subscription will be listed as ‘Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription’.

When you activate the Microsoft 365 developer subscription, it will setup a new tenant for your Microsoft account associated with your Visual Studio Subscription.

You won’t be able to use any of your existing tenants on this stage instead you can setup a new tenant (E.g xxxx.onmicrosoft.com account).

Now you have a Azure subscription and Microsoft 365 Developer subscription (E5) to play with.

Oh wow, that’s wonderful mate but these are two separate tenants. It would be amazing if we can use it all in one tenant where we can make use of all the resources. Yes, it’s doable with a little tweak in your tenant.

On my case, I used ‘[email protected]’ to sign up for Azure subscription and Dev E5 subscription. And my goal was to use the Azure subscription in my Dev tenant.

Here is how,

Step 1 – Invite your Azure account as a guest to your Dev tenant

1. Login to Dev tenant with your admin account (account that you’ve used to sign up for Dev E5 subscription). And then access portal.azure.com.
2. While in the portal navigate to ‘Azure Active Directory’ and then select ‘Users’.
3. Create a ‘New guest user’ and send the invite to your email address (E.g [email protected]) which is associated with Azure free credits subscription account.
4. Login to your email client and accept the invite.

Step 2 – Change Azure free credits subscription directory to Dev tenant directory

1. Login to portal.azure.com with your Azure subscription (E.g [email protected]).
2. While in ‘default directory’ (remember Azure subscription links with your default directory) select ‘Subscriptions’. This will show you the Azure subscription (Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription) listed along with your other subscriptions.
3. If you don’t see the Azure subscription, make sure to uncheck ‘Show only subscriptions selected in the global subscriptions filter’.
4. Select the Azure subscription (Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription) and then click on ‘Change directory’.
5. This will bring up a pop up window, on the window click ‘Select a directory’ and you should see your Dev tenant directory.
6. Select the Dev tenant name and click ‘Change’.
7. Allow 15-20 minutes for the above change to take place.

Step 3 – Grant ownership to ‘Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription’ through your Dev tenant

1. Login to portal.azure.com with your Azure account (E.g [email protected]).
2. While in the portal change the directory to your ‘Dev tenant’
3. Go to ‘Subscriptions’ and then select Azure subscription (Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription).
4. If you don’t see the Azure subscription, make sure to uncheck ‘Show only subscriptions selected in the global subscriptions filter’ to see all of them.
5. Navigate to ‘Access control (IAM)’ blade, click ‘Add’ and then ‘Add role assignment’.
6. On the pop up window, select ‘Owner’ role and leave ‘Assign access to’ default (user, group, or service principle).
7. Enter your Dev tenant admin account name. On my case it was [email protected], remember I used the same account for both Azure and Dev subscriptions.
8. And then select the same name and click ‘Save’.

Step 4 – Confirm ownership in Dev tenant

1. Login to Dev tenant with your admin account (the account that you’ve used to sign up for Dev E5 subscription). And then access portal.azure.com.
2. While in the portal, navigate to ‘Subscriptions’ blade. And then select the Azure subscription.
3. If you don’t see the Azure subscription then make sure to uncheck ‘Show only subscriptions selected in the global subscriptions filter’ to see all of them.
4. You should be able to see ‘Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription’ and ‘My role’ should be ‘Owner’.
5. If you don’t see it or get any errors, try to log out and start a fresh session.

That’s it. You can now utilize your Azure free monthly credits and Dev E5 subscriptions in your Dev tenant to play around.

I hope this post helped you with your learning journey. If you got few minutes to spare, take a look on my other blogs as well.

Happy learning!

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