I am assuming that you already know that you cannot legally reuse a P2V\u2019d OEM license because that license is tied to the tin it was originally installed on or bought with.\u00a0 That\u2019s why it was so cheap.<\/em><\/p>\n A lot of organisations are licensing their virtual machines with Windows Server Standard, one at a time.\u00a0 It\u2019s fine to install that edition of Windows Server on a VM.\u00a0 And there is no issue with using it \u2026 as long as that virtual machine does not move from physical host to physical host more than once every 90 days.\u00a0 I also believe that there is a geographic distance limitation on legally moving that VM (and that one depends on what region you are in AFAIK).\u00a0 In other words, if you build a virtualised cluster and are VMotion-ing or Live Migrating VMs (each licensed with individual copies of Windows Server Standard) around (manually, PRO, DRS) more than once every 90 days then you are breaking the licensing rules of Windows Server Standard edition and are subject to punishment.<\/p>\n A really common instance of this mistake is a VMware house.\u00a0 They don\u2019t realise or haven\u2019t been educated by their VMware reseller\/implementer about correct (and cheaper in dense environments!) Windows licensing in a virtualised environment.\u00a0 The implementer either mistakenly sees it as irrelevant in VMware-world or is just plain uneducated.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the truth: ever since 2004 or 2005 (I can\u2019t remember when and am too lazy to google it) we can license Windows as follows in a virtualised environment:<\/p>\n It feels silly that I\u2019m rehashing this.\u00a0 This should be common knowledge, just like that you need to insert a power cable in a computer to start it up.\u00a0 But it just does not seem all that common.<\/p>\n Have you made this \u201clicensing with individual copies of Windows Server Standard\u201d mistake?\u00a0 Think you\u2019ll get away with it?\u00a0 Hah!\u00a0 Your Microsoft reseller has records, their distributor(s) have records, and Microsoft has records.\u00a0 And those records get looked at every quarter or half year.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to see who has what, and these days it is assumed that virtualisation is being used.\u00a0 For example, if one looks at a customer\u2019s records and I see 40 copies of Windows Server Standard, they may assume that Windows Server Standard has been deployed on a reasonably sized virtualisation farm and that DRS\/VMotion\/Live Migration is enabled.\u00a0 That customer is possibly illegally using those licenses and their name is added to the audit list of someone like the Business Software Alliance (BSA).<\/p>\n Under Licensing a Virtualisation Cluster with Windows Server Enterprise<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n This one is common in small\/medium companies.\u00a0 A customer wants\/deploys a virtualisation cluster (Xen, VMware or Hyper-V) with two hosts and between 5-8 virtual machines.\u00a0 The virtualisation cluster will be active-active and virtual machines will be balanced across both hosts.<\/p>\n Each host is licensed with Windows Server Enterprise edition.\u00a0 That provides up to 4 free copies of Windows Server for VMs running on those hosts.\u00a0 Sweet; everything is licensed pretty economically because it works out cheaper than buying lots of copies of Standard edition, even if using XenServer or VMware for the hosts.\u00a0 It\u2019s an active-active cluster.\u00a0 So from time to time VMs might move around for performance load balancing (DRS or PRO).\u00a0 That might mean there could be 5 VMs on one host and 3 on the other.\u00a0 Or there could be a host failure\/maintenance window and that would mean host A could have 8 VMs and host B would have 0.<\/p>\n Remember that Windows Server Enterprise gives you up to 4<\/em> free licenses for VMs on that host <\/em>the license is assigned to.\u00a0 In this case, 1 license is assigned to Host A and 1 license is assigned to host B.\u00a0 This customer is now illegally licensed because they have 8 VMs on Host A running Windows Server, but are only covered for 4.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s a temporary thing.\u00a0 It is illegal.\u00a0 And this is quite common.<\/p>\n The correct way to license this is to either<\/em>:<\/p>\n Summary<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n You need to understand how Standard\/Enterprise\/Datacenter licensing works in virtualisation, just like you need to know that you have to buy a copy of Office for every one you install.\u00a0 Fro each deployment, you need to understand:<\/p>\n a) Will there be VMotion\/Live Migration\/DRS\/Dynamic Optimization\/Power Optimisation or whatever where the VMs will move around more than once every 90 days?<\/p>\n b) If you license VMs at the host level with Enterprise, will the number of VMs ever exceed the licensed number for that host, even if just for a very short period of time?<\/p>\n If you are at all confused, then call a real licensing expert, and not just your virtualisation reseller\/implementer.<\/p>\n I know VMware marketing are reading this blog and try to misquote it or make smart comments here from time to time.\u00a0 Everything here applies to the legal licensing of VMs, no matter what virtualisation is used.\u00a0 In fact, license your host with Enterprise or Datacenter (and getting licensing for your VMs) and a fully featured Hyper-V is just a tick box and 2 reboots away, saving you on that ever icreasing vTax.\u00a0 So take that, stuff it in your pipe, and smoke it I am not a licensing expert (and hence my lawyer says you should consult a real one for your requirements), but I do work with a team of them, and every day I learn something.\u00a0 Over the past few months, I\u2019ve had a lot of conversations about virtualisation (XenServer, Hyper-V, and VMware) and licensing with … Continue reading “Common Windows VM Virtualisation Licensing Mistakes”<\/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,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[183,195],"class_list":["post-11347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-licensing","tag-licensing","tag-virtualisation"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n
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