How Microsoft Windows Server licenses are calculated under virtual environments (Revision 2)

At the end of 08, I wrote a blog post about this, and the passage of time, the article may be a little outdated, so here to make a supplement and update.

Of course you can visit the Microsoft website carefully:

Http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/virtualization.aspx

or download this document:

Http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/C/A/FCAB58A9-CCAD-4E0A-A673-88A5EE74E2CC/Licensing_Microsoft_Server_ Products_virtual_environments.docx

English-hating students can see me this simple introduction:

(1) A Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard license can be installed 1 times on the same physical server (excluding host, abbreviated to 1+1)

(2) A Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise license can be installed 4 times on the same physical server (excluding host, abbreviated to 4+1)

(3) A Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter license can be installed unlimited times on the same physical server

(4) A Microsoft SQL Server Standard/workgroup/enterprise version license can be installed on the same physical server unlimited times

(5) The above license concepts apply to a variety of VM technologies, including Ms Virtual Server, Hyper-V, Xen, and VMware versions.

Because the High version license allows you to install a lower version of the software, you bought the license for Windows 2008 R2 to install Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, or Windows SQL Server And because the version itself is backward compatible, buying a datacenter version of the license allows you to install either the Enterprise version or the standard version. So when you purchase the Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter version, you can install any number of Windows Server VMs on the same physical server, regardless of the windows is the 2008R2 or 2008 or 2003 or 2000 or even NT, also do not have to control the datacenter version or Enterprise version or standard version.

However, note the following points, first of all, Datacenter version of Windows Server only per CPU, so 1 dual-CPU (attention is not dual-core, no matter how many cores of a CPU, are only 1 CPU, only need a single CPU license) The server must buy 2 licenses, four physical CPU servers must buy 4 licenses;

Secondly, we should pay attention to the application of enterprise license. For example, you have 2 Windows Server Enterprise licenses, which are used on 2 ESX, with 3 VMs running on 4 vm,esx2 on ESX1, all of which have Windows Server Enterprise installed. You are in compliance with the license specification at this time. If you vmotion a virtual machine at this time, from ESX1 to ESX2, this is legal, because at this point the ESX1 runs 3, and the ESX2 runs 4. But from ESX2 to ESX1 is illegal, so at this time ESX2 run 2, but ESX1 ran 5 VMS, exceeding the license.

Of course, Microsoft does not use technical means (such as black screen) to control this point, it is a legal compliance concept.

I hope this article will help the enterprise administrators who want legal compliance. If you have any further questions, you are advised to consult your Microsoft sales staff.

This article is from the "Delxu Live notepad" blog, please be sure to keep this source http://delxu.blog.51cto.com/975660/279033