A new OEM only version of Windows Server has been announced. Foundation Edition is aimed at giving people a cheap way of deploying Windows servers.
“Windows Server 2008 Foundation is licensed by user accounts. Each license of Windows Server 2008 Foundation is limited to a maximum of 15 user accounts. Moreover, a user account can be assigned to only one distinct user at a time.
Because Windows Server 2008 Foundation is licensed in this way, you do not require Windows Server client access licenses (CALs). This also makes Windows Server 2008 Foundation much more cost effective for small businesses. Although Windows Server 2008 Foundation does not require Windows Server CALs, TS CALs or Rights Management CALs are required to use those server roles on a Windows Server 2008 Foundation–based server”.
What can you use it for?
- Core Infrastructure: Windows Server Foundation is an excellent option for use with single or multiple workloads, such as file sharing, print sharing, networking, Terminal Services, remote connections, and other common server roles. Also, Windows Server Foundation can be used for Internet Web services and as a Web server platform for intranets and extranets where user authentication is required.
- Active Directory: Windows Server Foundation can be used as an Active Directory server or domain controller (within Active Directory domains that are running Windows Server Foundation only).
- Terminal Services (Remote Desktop): Windows Server Foundation is also ideal for multiple-user computing, such as sharing Microsoft Office or using Terminal Services.
- Line of Business Applications: Your line of business applications that are built for the Windows Server 2008 family can be deployed on your server. If they have the “Certified for”, or “Works with” accreditation for Windows Server 2008 Standard, then they will be supported on Windows Server Foundation, as well as being able to deploy many third party software which is currently available for Windows Server 2008.
This isn’t going to be something medium/large business look at but it might be something of interest to candidates for SBS/EBS to add additional servers to their network.
Very interesting. Have you seen this OS, Aidan? Just wondering if you’d had any preview time, that wasn’t covered by NDA. Will this compete with open source in small shops, perhaps? Any pricing guidelines, yet?
I haven’t seen it at all. I doubt it’ll even hit Connect/beta because it’s really only a relatively minor tweak to the licensing model. I haven’t seen any pricing details anywhere yet. I suspect it will be very cheap to compete with the Linux products at the bottom end of the market. Being OEM only ensures it will be very cheap. I wonder how this will affect bare-metal restoration … you cannot legally do bare-metal recovery of OEM licenses to another piece of tin because OEM licenses are infinitely tied to the tin they were bought on.