Software License Management Technology for virtual data centers

The method used by the organization for software license management has not changed for many years. Generally, it Administrators determine the installed software instance based on the metering software, and then compare the number with the number of licenses purchased, although this method proved to be very effective, it is a bit inappropriate for a virtual data center to use this method to manage software licenses, this article explains why the traditional license review technology is no longer suitable for virtual data centers and provides the best alternative to software license management.

Why is the traditional licensing review method not applicable?

The traditional licensing review technology is not suitable for virtual data centers mainly because of the rapid increase in Virtual Machine VMS, the self-service portal makes it possible for administrators and authorized users to create a large number of VMS within several minutes. In many cases, the VM will survive for a short period of time and will be deleted in a few weeks, this means that if an organization uses traditional metering software to perform software license audits, the audit results may be invalid.

Another reason is that the operating system has different licensing methods in the virtual environment. In the past, the Administrator needed to assign a license to each of the operating systems deployed by him or her, but now, some Windows Server operating systems have a multi-purpose license. For example, Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition can be installed on virtual hosts and virtual servers to run Microsoft Hyper-V only on host-Level Operating Systems, for Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, four VMS can be installed. For data center edition, there is no limit on the number of VMS.

This may be a big problem because the Organization has licensed metering software to determine how many licenses they need to buy if the application needs to buy a license for each operating system, the Organization may eventually spend more money to buy software licenses.

Solve the challenges of server and application Virtualization

Another difficulty is application virtualization. Most software tracks the application directories of each PC by looking for the system registry to determine which applications are installed. When the application is virtualized, this tracing license method does not work either, because the virtualization application is not installed in the traditional method, so the registry key that is generally used to track software installation may not exist. In addition, some virtualization applications may not be installed at all. Some Application virtualization products transmit applications to the user's desktop as a stream instead of directly installing applications on the user's desktop.

Unfortunately, there is no simple solution to license changes caused by server and application virtualization, in part because many application publishers still use traditional license terms and do not consider virtualization, for example, the application license may declare that each computer must purchase a license. virtualization may cause many problems if the license is not considered, such:

Do I need to license the desktop if the application streams to the desktop? This is because the software is not installed on the desktop.

If you need to buy a license for each computer that installs software, does it mean that you only need to buy a license for the virtual desktop infrastructure servers hosting 80 virtual desktops?

Solve the dilemma of software licensing

Software licenses are annoying and IT may be difficult to follow the terms with meticulous care. However, many IT experts are willing to follow the spirit of the terms, IT experts are still trying to find ways to track software license usage in virtual data centers.

Although license tracking software does not fully meet the needs of virtual data centers, it is currently the best option to find tools designed for virtual environments, understanding the relationship between host servers and virtual servers is the only way for IT experts to correctly manage server operating system licenses.

As a licensed metering software IT expert, IT should ensure that the selected products can monitor license usage, either in real time or on schedule, so as to keep up with the changing software usage.

IT experts who manage a private cloud can use the Web interface to create VMS on demand. There are multiple options to ensure license compliance. The best option is to set a quota based on their own licenses, there is no risk that the user has exceeded the software license limit.

Another option is to manage the cloud on Windows Server 2008 datacenter edition. IT experts do not have to worry about the number of virtual machines created by end users, because the data center version has no limit on the number of VMS. However, IT experts still need to ensure that they correctly manage the licenses for applications running on these servers.

As you can see, there is no effective way to solve the software licensing problem of the virtual data center. With the maturity of the licensed metering software, this problem will be effectively solved, you 'd better avoid surging software installation volumes.