Hi,
Yes, for VMs quantity is the number of a specific VM instance size/Region/Term. For SQL Managed Instance quantity is the number of vCores of a specific Performance Tier/Region/Term. Please see excerpt from documentation:
The amount of compute resources being purchased within the capacity reservation. The quantity is a number of vCores in the selected Azure region and Performance tier that are being reserved and will get the billing discount. For example, if you run or plan to run multiple databases with the total compute capacity of standard-series (Gen5) 16 vCores in the East US region, then you would specify the quantity as 16 to maximize the benefit for all the databases.
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Thanks.
-TP