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Category: Microsoft Licensing Tip

Licensing desktop operating systems
Scott D. RosenbergMicrosoft Licensing Tip, Microsoft: News You Can UseLeave a Comment on Licensing desktop operating systems

With Microsoft desktop operating systems (OS) are surprisingly simple when it comes to licensing. For each physical or virtual client that uses that operating system you can install one copy per license. This includes thin clients also. The only exception to this rule is if you have a volume licensing program – the desktop OS license is an upgrade. Typically, the licenses that come with your PCs when you purchase them are considered base licenses; therefore, you should only have […]

Microsoft: Giving away the server farms
Scott D. RosenbergMicrosoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft Licensing TipLeave a Comment on Microsoft: Giving away the server farms

For those of you with a large number of servers, Microsoft has made some changes in its licensing in the past year to accommodate virtualization. You can license by server farm, instead of by server. Microsoft customers are able to reassign licenses freely across servers within that server farm, but only for certain server applications. It does not apply to software licenses for the Windows Server operating system, Client Access Licenses (CALs), User Subscription Licenses (USLs), Device Subscription Licenses (DSLs), […]

Knowing your Peak Capacity
Scott D. RosenbergMicrosoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft Licensing Tip, VirtualizationLeave a Comment on Knowing your Peak Capacity

One important rule in server licensing (especially in the Microsoft environment) is understanding your peak capacity. Very simply, you must be licensed for the maximum usage of your server – the maximum number of running instances. Even if you, for example, only ever need one instance, but there is a possibility at some point there will be two instances run on that server at the same time – it needs to be licensed for two. The number of instances that […]

Virtualization Licensing Tip: Parallels’ Virtuozzo
Scott D. RosenbergMicrosoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft Licensing Tip, VirtualizationLeave a Comment on Virtualization Licensing Tip: Parallels’ Virtuozzo

When using Parallels’ Virtuozzo on a single physical server, silos are created (running instances  that act as the host operating system). Because of this, Virtuozzo is unable to run more than one edition of Windows Server on the physical server. With some products, Microsoft will allow you to run different editions of Server 2008 on different Operating System Environments (OSEs), but in the case of Virtuozzo, you (obviously) cannot take advantage of this. If you are running all instances through […]

Client Access Licenses (CALs) and External Connectors
Scott D. RosenbergMicrosoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft Licensing Tip, VirtualizationLeave a Comment on Client Access Licenses (CALs) and External Connectors

With most Microsoft servers in a virtualized environment, there are two types of licenses that you can, and in some cases must, acquire – Client Access Licenses (CAL) and External Connectors (EC). The requirements for both are the same – one is required for each device that accesses an instance of server software. This can be on either a physical or virtual server. For example, if you have an employee who needs access to the physical server on some occasions […]

Virtualization Licensing Tip: VMware’s ESX
Scott D. RosenbergMicrosoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft Licensing Tip, VirtualizationLeave a Comment on Virtualization Licensing Tip: VMware’s ESX

If you have implemented VMware’s ESX on your server as the core virtualization technology, a license is required for every instance running in the virtual environment. If you have only assigned one license to Windows Server 2008 Standard while using ESX, you may only run one instance of the software at a time. Windows Server 2008 cannot be deployed as the operating system in the physical environment since ESX takes its place. If you have the Enterprise version – you […]

Virtualization Rights: Windows Server 2008 Datacenter
Scott D. RosenbergMicrosoft Licensing Compliance, Microsoft Licensing Tip, VirtualizationLeave a Comment on Virtualization Rights: Windows Server 2008 Datacenter

Datacenter is the ultimate package – you must license every physical processor in a server, but then you are allowed to run the software in the physical environment and an unlimited number of virtual environments on the licensed server. You are also granted an unlimited number of simultaneous running instances on a licensed server. This makes licensing much easier to deal with as you don’t have to track instances across your servers and worry about being under-licensed. You are also […]

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