Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the Azure Marketplace with Commitments

This topic shows you how to get up and running using Confluent Cloud on the Azure Marketplace with a usage-based billing commitment. With a commitment, you sign up for a minimum spend amount and get a discount on your committed usage of Confluent Cloud.

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 Consumption Metrics for Marketplace Deployments 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 your Azure AD email address has already been used for signup on Confluent Cloud, you must first remove yourself as a user from the Confluent Cloud org where you signed up previously, so your Azure AD email can be used 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 your “Azure AD related email user” from the old organization. This way, you can sign up using SSO. Alternatively, another user in the old organization can delete your Azure AD user id. To find the email address associated with your 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 left navigation menu. Your Azure AD email address appears in the Identity section under User Principle Name.

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

• To subscribe to an offer, you must be logged 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.

Procedure

Buying products that are provided to your organization under a private offer requires two steps: accepting the offer and subscribing to the offer. The purchase takes place only after you’ve completed both steps.

Step 1: Accept the Offer

You must accept the offer to subscribe to the offer. Accepting the offer creates a contractual agreement between you and Confluent. The agreement includes all of the following components:

• Your name or the name of the legal entity to which the offer applies.
• Public plans that are 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.

   

You’re not done yet. By accepting the offer, you’ve agreed to the terms and the prices Confluent has listed. No purchase has been made and no money has changed hands. You must subscribe to the offer to finish the transaction.

Step 2: Subscribe to the Offer

You or someone in your organization has accepted the private offer from Confluent. Use the following procedure to subscribe to the offer:

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, not all of them may 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 specified region is used to store metadata for this resource group, and does not need to be the same region where your Confluent Cloud clusters are located. You are not charged for this usage.

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 organizationLink to an existing Confluent organization

   • Enter the name for your new Confluent organization.

     

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

9. Click Review and create.

10. After validation occurs, you are ready to create the resource. Review the terms of your plan and click Create. Your deployment will start. This could take up to a minute.

11. After your resources are deployed, you will receive a confirmation message. 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 may be asked to choose an account for SSO. Grant permission to the Confluent app on the Consent screen by clicking Accept. You will be signed in. From here, you can manage your resources on Confluent Cloud.

13. You can invite additional 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 are subscribed to Confluent Cloud through the Azure Marketplace.

Next steps

After successfully creating or linking a Confluent Cloud organization, you can start managing access and resources:

• Enable single sign-on (SSO) for your organization. For more information, see Single sign-on in the Azure documentation.
• Add users and assign permissions to your Confluent Cloud organization from within Azure. For more information, see How to manage user permissions in a Confluent organization in the Azure documentation, and Predefined RBAC roles in Confluent Cloud in the Confluent Cloud documentation.
• Manage Kafka clusters in Confluent Cloud. For more information, see Manage Kafka Clusters on Confluent Cloud in the Confluent Cloud documentation.
• Use Azure Functions and Azure Cosmos DB connectors. For more information, see Azure services and Confluent Cloud integrations in the Azure documentation.

For more information on managing and using Confluent Cloud resources with Azure, see Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud - An Azure Native ISV Service in the Azure documentation.

Troubleshoot

Cannot view private offer

Symptoms

You access the marketplace via 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. If you still cannot view the private offer, contact your Confluent AE.

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” is shown as the reason for signup failure.

Solution

See the Prerequisites section. If your Azure AD email is already in use for another organization on Confluent Cloud, you need to remove yourself as a user from that organization before you can register for Confluent Cloud through the Azure marketplace.

SSO Login Failure - Invalid Username

Symptoms

The user is authenticated successfully and is registered with Confluent Cloud but does not belong to the Azure AD Tenant that was used during Confluent Cloud Signup.

Solution

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

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.

Not able to launch Azure resource in a region

Symptoms

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

Solution

Verify that your policies are set to allow you to provision resources in your chosen region on the Azure portal.

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. In addition, verify you have an Azure Standard or above support plan associated with your subscription. A Developer support subscription is not sufficient.

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

Make sure you are linking a Confluent Cloud account to a Marketplace usage-based commitment account. Linking a Confluent Pay As You Go account to an Azure Marketplace Pay As You Go account is not supported.