Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the Azure Marketplace with Commitments

A usage-based billing commitment lets you pre-commit to a minimum spend on Confluent Cloud through the Azure Marketplace in exchange for a discount on your committed usage. This topic shows you how to sign up.

Tip

To pay for Confluent Cloud, Confluent Consumption Units (CCUs) are enabled in the cloud Marketplace. Pricing in Marketplace is the same as direct purchase pricing. For more information, see Manage Billing in Confluent Cloud.

Prerequisites

• An Azure Marketplace account. You can use Confluent Cloud and get billed directly through Azure.

  Important

  You cannot sign up for Confluent Cloud through a Microsoft Solutions Provider.

• Confluent Cloud currently requires your email address to be unique across all organizations. If you already used your Azure AD email address to sign up for Confluent Cloud, you must first remove yourself as a user from the Confluent Cloud organization where you signed up earlier, so you can use your Azure AD email for single sign-on (SSO). One option is to invite an alternate email that you own as a user to the old organization, and then delete the user associated with your Azure AD email from the old organization. This way, you can sign up using SSO. As another option, a different user in the old organization can delete your Azure AD user ID. To find the email address associated with your Azure AD account, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the Azure Active Directory portal.

  2. Click the More Info link in the Tenant Information section.

  3. Click Profile under Manage in the navigation menu. Your Azure AD email address appears in the Identity section under User Principal Name.

• To accept an offer, you must sign in to the Azure Marketplace and you must have Owner access to the billing account.

• To subscribe to an offer, you must sign in to the Azure Marketplace and you must have Owner access to the subscription you are using to sign up (the one linked to the billing account).

• Your Azure policy should allow you to provision resources in the region where you choose to set up the Confluent resource.

Subscribe to a Confluent Cloud private offer on the Azure Marketplace

To subscribe to a Confluent Cloud private offer on the Azure Marketplace, you must accept the offer and then subscribe to it. The purchase takes place only after you complete both steps.

Step 1: Accept the offer

Accepting an Azure private offer creates a contractual agreement between you and Confluent. You must accept the offer before you can subscribe to it. The agreement includes the following components:

• Your name or the name of the legal entity to which the offer applies.

• Public plans included in the offer.

• Private offer price.

• Custom legal terms for the offer, if applicable.

• Start and end dates when the discount applies to the offer.

• Expiration date for the offer. You must accept the offer before this date.

Confluent creates the offer and sends you an email. Use the following procedure to accept the offer:

1. Click the link in the email to go to the offer.

   Note

   If you don’t see the email, check your spam filter.

2. Review the offer and select Accept Private Offer.

   

Accepting the offer does not complete the purchase. You must also subscribe to the offer to provision your Confluent Cloud resource and finish the transaction. By accepting the offer, you agree to the terms and prices that Confluent listed.

Step 2: Subscribe to the offer

After you or someone in your organization accepts the private offer from Confluent, subscribe to the offer to provision your Confluent Cloud resource:

1. Sign in to the Azure portal and under Azure services, select Marketplace.

2. In the navigation menu, under My Marketplace, select Private products.

   Tip

   You can also click You have private products available. View private products.

3. Select the Confluent Cloud tile.

   

4. From Plan, select Annual Commit and click Subscribe. You might have multiple plans available. To see a list of available plans and plan details, select Plans+Pricing.

   Tip

   If you have multiple plans, some plans might not be eligible for a private offer. When you select a subscription eligible for a private offer, Azure prompts you with a success message.

5. For Resource group, choose Create new and enter a Name.

   

   Tip

   To change your plan, select Change plan. A list of all available plans appears. Choose the plan you want and select Change plan.

6. In Region, under Instance details, select a region for the resource.

   Note

   The region you select does not need to match the region where you run your Confluent Cloud clusters. Confluent Cloud uses the selected region to store metadata for this resource group, and you are not charged for this metadata storage.

7. For the Confluent Organization details, choose to either Create a new Confluent organization or Link to an existing organization. If you link to an existing organization, you will be prompted for your Confluent Cloud account credentials.

   Create a new Confluent organization

   • Enter the name for your new Confluent organization.

     

   Link to an existing Confluent organization

   1. Click the Link to an existing organization button to navigate to the Confluent Cloud log in page.

      

   2. Sign in with your existing Confluent Cloud credentials.

   3. The Confirm billing updates page displays. This page has two sections:

      • Current billing info shows your the billing information before account linking.

      • Updated billing with Azure shows the new payment method for the account after linking. Check each box to confirm that you understand the terms of service, billing terms and SSO settings.

        

   4. Click Choose this organization. Once confirmed, the linked organization name will appear next to the Confluent Organization Name field in the Azure Portal.

      Important

      When you link to an existing organization, the existing organization should not be associated with an active commit subscription. If an active subscription exists at the time of linking, then the existing subscription will be automatically cancelled.

8. (Optional) Click the Tags tab to create tags for your project.

9. Click Review and create.

10. After validation completes, you can create the resource. Review the terms of your plan and click Create. Your deployment starts. This can take up to a minute.

11. After Azure deploys your resources, a confirmation message appears. Click Go to resource to view the deployed resource on the Azure portal.

    

12. Click the Confluent SSO URL Manage on Confluent Cloud to sign on to Confluent Cloud using your Azure AD account. You might be asked to choose an account for SSO. Grant permission to the Confluent app on the Consent screen by clicking Accept. You are now signed in and can manage your resources on Confluent Cloud.

13. You can invite more users to your organization by creating a Confluent Cloud account. Use an Azure AD user, or a non-SSO user with an email address and password. For more information, see Add a local user account and Add an SSO user.

    Important

    Azure AD is the only supported SSO identity provider when you subscribe to Confluent Cloud through the Azure Marketplace.

Next steps

After you create or link a Confluent Cloud organization, you can manage access and resources:

• Manage Kafka clusters in Confluent Cloud. For more information, see Manage Kafka Clusters on Confluent Cloud in the Confluent Cloud documentation.

• Enable single sign-on (SSO) for your organization. For more information, see Single sign-on in the Azure documentation.

• Enable just-in-time (JIT) user provisioning to automatically create Confluent Cloud user accounts in Azure. For more information, see Support for Azure Marketplace organizations.

• Add users and assign permissions to your Confluent Cloud organization from within Azure. For more information, see Use Confluent Access Management in the Azure Portal in the Azure documentation.

• Use Azure Functions and Azure Cosmos DB connectors. For more information, see Connect a Confluent Organization to Azure Compute Services in the Azure documentation.

• Manage Confluent connectors from Azure Portal. For more information, see Use Confluent Connectors in Azure (preview) in the Azure documentation.

• Use the Azure CLI to manage your Confluent Cloud organization. For more information, see az confluent command reference in the Azure documentation.

For more information on managing and using Confluent Cloud resources with Azure, see Apache Kafka & Apache Flink on Confluent Cloud, an Azure Native Integrations service in the Azure documentation.

Important

To manage Confluent Cloud users from within Azure, your Azure user account must be a member of at least the Azure RBAC Contributor role, in the Confluent Cloud organization linked to the Azure account, and using the same email address on Confluent Cloud as in Azure. For more information, see the Azure documentation.

Troubleshoot

Cannot view private offer

Symptoms

You access the marketplace through portal.azure.com, but cannot view the private offer after clicking View private products.

Solution

Confirm with your Confluent Account Executive (AE) that a private offer has been created for your organization. Also, confirm that you shared the correct billing account ID with your Confluent AE.

SSO login failure - tenant mismatch

Symptoms

SSO login to Confluent Cloud shows an error after login.

Solution

Ask your Confluent Cloud administrator to add your user to the Azure AD tenant that was used during Confluent Cloud organization signup.

Account cannot be linked

Symptoms

Your attempt to link a pay-as-you-go account fails with the message “Account cannot be linked, code 9201”.

Solution

You cannot link a Confluent Pay As You Go account to an Azure Marketplace Pay As You Go account. This combination is not supported. To resolve, link the Confluent Cloud account to a Marketplace usage-based commitment account instead.

Azure administrator approval required for private offer

Symptoms

You try to accept a private offer and validation fails with the message, “Validation failed. Some payment validation issue happened for the subscription id.”

Solution

In the rules for the collection, the Azure administrator must select, Enable private products, which approves all private offers and private plans for your organization. For more information, see Collection rules in the Azure documentation.

You cannot approve a specific private offer. You must give global permission for all private offers.

If you continue to get the validation error, you must re-enable Marketplace purchases. For more information, see Enabling Azure Marketplace purchases.

Billing account is Microsoft Partner Agreement (MPA)

Symptoms

During clickthrough, you see the following error:

Validation failed. Microsoft.Confluent resource provider registration API failed with Unknown error.
Please retry after some time or if required, contact support at https://support.confluent.io. User can try to register manually by going to
subscription -> Resource providers -> search Microsoft.Confluent and click register.

Solution

To determine your billing type, see Check the type of your billing account in the Azure documentation. If your billing account is a Microsoft Partner Agreement, contact Confluent Support to create an offer.

Email already exists

Symptoms

When you try to sign up on Confluent Cloud, you receive a conflict error. When you click the Click here for details link within the warning message, Email already exists appears as the reason for signup failure.

Solution

If your Azure AD email is already in use for another organization on Confluent Cloud, remove yourself as a user from that organization before you register for Confluent Cloud through the Azure Marketplace.

SSO login failure - invalid username

Symptoms

You sign in with your Azure AD credentials, but the email or User Principal Name (UPN) in your Azure AD token is not registered with any Confluent Cloud organization, so you can’t sign in to Confluent Cloud.

Solution

Ask your Confluent Cloud organization administrator to invite you to the Confluent Cloud organization.

SSO login failure - tenant mismatch

Symptoms

You sign in with your Azure AD credentials, but your account does not belong to the Azure AD tenant used during Confluent Cloud signup, so you can’t sign in to Confluent Cloud.

Solution

Ask your Confluent Cloud organization administrator to add you to the Azure AD tenant that you used during Confluent Cloud signup.

Not able to launch Azure resource in a region

Symptoms

You see a message on the Azure portal UI stating that you cannot launch resources in a certain Azure region.

Solution

Region restrictions come from an Azure Policy assignment, typically the built-in Allowed locations policy. Because an administrator sets these policies, ask your Azure administrator to allow your region.

For more information, see Azure Policy in the Azure documentation.

Deployment failed - could not create Marketplace resource

Symptoms

You see a message on the Azure portal UI stating that the deployment operation failed.

Solution

Make sure your subscription has Marketplace purchase permission, meaning your account has subscription owner or contributor permissions.

Also, verify you have an Azure Standard or higher support plan associated with your subscription. A Developer support subscription does not meet this requirement.

Need Azure administrator approval while using SSO

Symptoms

When you try to sign in to Confluent Cloud using Azure default SSO, you receive an Admin approval required error. This can happen the first time you log in after you enable click-through or group mappings.

Solution

The Azure Global Administrator must accept permissions for the Confluent application. After the Azure Global Administrator clicks SSO and approves, all users can log in.