![\"Smile\"](\"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/wlEmoticon-smile.png\")
<\/li>\n![\"Sad](\"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/wlEmoticon-sadsmile.png\")
\u00a0 I guess we have to take the bad with the good ![\"Winking](\"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/wlEmoticon-winkingsmile.png\")
<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nIdeal Process<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Definitions<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Licensing<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Licensing Applications Per CPU<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n In the standard editions, you license the CPU\u2019s of the OSE.\u00a0 For example, in a VOSE you count the vCPUs.\u00a0 In a POSE, you count the pCPUs.<\/p>\n In the Enterprise\/Datacenter installations, you should license the host pCPUs.\u00a0 There are benefits that cover more than one VOSE.\u00a0 Enterprise usually covers 4 VOSEs (SQL), and DataCenter (if all pCPU’s are licensed with a minimum of 2) covers all VOSEs.<\/p>\n Simple VS Flexibility<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n We want simple licensing.\u00a0 MS is claiming the the dynamic nature of virtualisation requires flexibility and this is an opposing force to simplicity.<\/p>\n Predictable:<\/p>\n SQL Licensing<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n God only knows!\u00a0 The MS folks in the room cannot agree.\u00a0 Ask your LAR and your local MS office licensing specialists.\u00a0 The topic of 2008 rights (Enterprise covered all VOSEs) vs 2008 R3 rights (Enterprise covers 4 VOSEs) is debated.\u00a0 One side says that 2008 rights have ended as of the release of 2008 R2.\u00a0 The other side says they remain as long as you licensed SQL 2008 prior to the 2008 R2 release with per processor licensing or you bought instances with maintained Software Assurance.\u00a0 There\u2019s no firm answer so we break for lunch.<\/p>\n OK, there is a discount process.\u00a0 You can license per processor based on virtual CPU, or physical CPU.\u00a0 For example, if you have 1 vCPU in a VM on a host with quad core processors then you can buy 1 vCPU license.\u00a0 If you have 4 vCPUs in a VM on a host with quad core processors then \u2013> that VM runs on 1 pCPU so you can buy 1 per processor license for the pCPU.\u00a0 If you have 2 * VM\u2019s with 4 * vCPUs on a host with a single quad core processor then you buy 2 per processor licenses \u2013> each VM runs on a single pCPU and you must license each installtion (1 pCPU * 2 VMs = 2 per processor licenses).<\/p>\n If licensing per POSE (host) then you must license each possible host that may license your SQL VM\u2019s.\u00a0 So, you could use Failover Clustering\u2019s preferred hosts option for your SQL VM\u2019s and set up a few preferred hosts in a cluster, and license those hosts.\u00a0 And remember to take advantage of the CPU discount process.<\/p>\n Server<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n You can freely reassign a license within a server farm.\u00a0 Microsoft has a time zone definition of a server farm, e.g. 3 hours for North America, and 5.5 hours for Europe and the Middle East.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not doing the std, ent, datacenter stuff because it\u2019s done to death.<\/p>\n Most Common Mistakes<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n This is where the speaker warns us to never trust someone who claims to fully understand MS licensing rules.\u00a0 Always qualify the answer by saying that you need to verify it.<\/p>\n VDI<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n If you have non-SA, legacy or thin clients, then you can use the VDA license for VDI.\u00a0 If you have SA then your Enterprise licensing entitles you to 4 VM\u2019s per licensed desktop machine and place those VM\u2019s on a virtualisation host.<\/p>\n The VDI standard suite includes a bunch of management systems (SCVMM, SCOM, SCCM, and MDOP) and an RDS license for delivering user access to the VMs.\u00a0 The VDI enterprise suite extends this by offering unrestricted RDS licensing to allow the user to access both VDI and<\/em> terminal servers.\u00a0 You also get App-V for RDS.<\/p>\n Scenarios<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n If you are running things like SQL, then you may need to consider live migration or VMotion.\u00a0 There was a real-world example based on VMware.\u00a0 24 possible hosts (4 CPUs each), 295 VMs and 36 of those running SQL.\u00a0 How do you license?\u00a0 For Server, the best scenario is to buy 96 * Datecenter edition.\u00a0 For SQL, the actual solution (MS, customer, lawyers, etc involved) was to create a cluster of 4 hosts.\u00a0 The SQL cluster of 4 hosts was licensed with SQL Datacenter edition.\u00a0 That limited costs and maximised compliance.<\/p>\n Summary<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n That was an informative session.\u00a0 The presenter did a good job.\u00a0 He was accepting of being challenged and seemed to enjoy the 2-way conversation that we had going on.\u00a0 If you are a partner and get an invite for this type of session, register and go in.\u00a0 I think you\u2019ll learn something.\u00a0 For me, the day flew by, and that\u2019s always a good sign.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say I understood everything and will retain it all.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s just the nature of this EU treaty-like complexity.<\/p>\n It seems to me that MS licensing for virtualised environments conflicts directly with the concepts of a dynamic data centre or private cloud computing.\u00a0 For example, SCVMM 2012 gives us elasticity.\u00a0 SCVMM SSP 2.0 gives us complete self-service.\u00a0 System Center makes it possible to automatically deploy VMs based on user demand.\u00a0 IT lose control of licensing that\u2019s deployed in the private cloud because we\u2019re handing over a lot of that control to the business.\u00a0 What\u2019s to stop the owner of a dozen VMs from deploying SQL, BizTalk, and so on, especially if we are doing cross charging which assumes they have an IT budget to spend?<\/p>\n Microsoft licensing rules assume complete control and oversight.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have that!\u00a0 That was tough in the physical world; it\u2019s impossible in the virtual world.\u00a0 We might deploy VMs onto the \u201cnon-SQL\u201d Hyper-V or vSphere cluster but the owners of those VMs can easily go and install SQL or something else on there that requires per-host licensing (for cost savings).\u00a0 This pushes you back to per-VM licensing and you lose those cost savings.<\/p>\n I think MS licensing needs to think long and hard about this.\u00a0 The private cloud is about to take off.\u00a0 We need things to be simplified, which they are not.\u00a0 On the contrary, I think virtualised licensing (on any of the hypervisors) is more complicated than ever, considering the dynamic nature of the data centre which is made possible by the great tools made by the likes of Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix.<\/p>\n On the positive side, if you understand this stuff, and put it to work, you can really save a lot of money in a virtualised environment.\u00a0 The challenge is that you have to maintain some very tight controls.\u00a0 It\u2019s made me reconsider how I would look at designing Hyper-V\/vSphere clusters.<\/p>\n I\u2019m at a MS partner briefing day in Dublin.\u00a0 The focus is on licensing in a virtualised environment.\u00a0 I\u2019ve spent most of the last 3 years in a hosting environment with SPLA licensing.\u00a0 This will give me an opportunity to start getting back in touch with volume licensing. Good News: we got key shaped 8GB … Continue reading “MS Partner Event: Server Licensing in a Virtual Environment”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[181,183,185,88,102,195,196,103],"class_list":["post-10954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-licensing","tag-hyper-v","tag-licensing","tag-microsoft","tag-private-cloud","tag-vdi","tag-virtualisation","tag-vmm","tag-vmware"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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