Licensing issues

[charon]

Hi,

i would like to ask you about windows Licensing in KVM guests.

Today i read an article in german about licensing of Windows Desktop OS' and Windows Server OS'.

So here is my question:
How many Windows XP's can i install per license (1 or 2?)
How many Windows 2003 Server can i install (1 or up to 4?)

Does the host system has to be Windows, too? Certainly i want to do this with proxmox again.

Here is the link (german):

http://www.serverhowto.de/Lizenzierung-von-Microsoft-Software-innerhalb-virtueller-Systeme.79.0.html

Here translated with google:

http://74.125.79.132/translate_c?hl...gle.de&usg=ALkJrhjhSmUR2NEeKcGLvCsTYqoRHPCU8Q

charon

 

[fortechitsolutions]

Hi,

I don't believe licensing is too concerned with the virtualization platform being used (KVM vs Xen vs HyperV vs ...etc... ); and different flavours of windows have different rules regarding virtual instances permitted per 'physical seat' of XP.

My recollection,

XP Pro (desktop OS) - is a 1:1 ratio; if you buy a license of XP you may run one instance (physical or virtual)

Server 2003 - standard edition - has a 1:1 ratio - as per XP Pro

Server 2003 - Enerprise Edition - has a 4:1(*see below) ratio - you may run 4 VMs of Server EE2003 on a single physical host if you own one license of EE2003.

Server 2003 - DataCentre Edition - has an N:1 ratio - you may run as many VMs of Server DCE as you choose *on a single physical host*

To me, it seems no huge coincidence that the 4:1 VM:Seat ratio for Server2003-EE is also reflecting the fact that Server2003 EE costs about 4 times as much as Server2003-standard edition. (of course there are various features that distinguish the products as well - ram,cpu cores supported, etc - but this detail alone always amuses me - ie - you can't get 'cheaper server 2003 instances' by purchasing Ent.Edn and then running VMs with it - as compared to buying 4 seats of StdEdition 2003 server.

Obviously, if you have 'really high end' single physical hardware host running DataCentre Edition, you "might" be able to get 'cheaper' Server2003 -per-instance-effective cost; but I suspect that once you start paying for 4-socket or bigger iron, the price-per-instance of Server2003 is going to be the least of your worries from an 'economy' perspective.

MS also now distinguishes between "creating and storing a VM Image" as different from "creating and running a VM". ie, you may now create and store as many VMs as you wish, without 'consuming a license' for each stored instance. Your license requirements are determined primarily by the number of actively running VMs.

This stuff is "fairly clearly detailed" at the URL,

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/howtobuy/licensingr2/overview.mspx

Of course, Vista/Server2008 has its own VM license rules (which are fairly similar in general, I believe). The new Windows 7 will likely bundle a virtualized XP environment (and XP license) at least in some flavours of the product (for added backwards-compatability support reasons, yay - twice the support footprint, how can that be bad ?!

I may have some of this off somewhat, but I think this captures the general flavour of the fun.

Clearly, virtualization is much more 'fun' with license-free OS / platforms - no fiddling around with all this stuff.


--Tim Chipman
Fortech I.T. Solutions
http://FortechITSolutions.ca


(* - caveat note on the 4:1 ratio for Enterprise edition - after reading the article you had linked above in your post: You MAY run 'five' instances, IFF and only IFF, your physical host in question runs the '5th seat' Windows platform exclusively as a host upon which virtualization and management of virtual machines takes place. You cannot host other services on this 'virtualization host' (that happens to be a windows system). So - for example - no database or web services may be hosted on that physical host OS; only a virtualization layer, upon which you would run up to 4 VMs of Windows Server). This makes a bit more sense with HyperV-Server2008 since this windows platform inherently supports "type 1 hypervisor virtualization" (more or less) - whereas Windows Server2003 .. does not .. rather you would (ugh) use "type 2 hypervisor virtualization" (VMWare server type product / old school VMWare) - or most likely, simply not use Win2003Server as your virtualization platform; dump the '5th seat' and stick with 4VM instances of Server2003 for each physical 'license' of Server2003-Ent.Edition which you own - and run these VMs on whatever virtualization platform you like - XenServer, Xen, Virtual Iron, KVM/ProxmoxVE/etc etc etc).

 

[JustaGuy]

I'm looking forward to the HA coming in PVE 2, and am a little concerned about how it'll effect licensing.

Could someone who understands this better than I kindly explain what the current policy with Microsoft is on this?
I was hoping it would be clearer than it turned out to be.

I glanced over a few Google results and saw something about migration limits except for guests hosted by approved hypervisors due to a relatively recent change in licensing policy.
And the results I saw all were to do with "Server 2008" & Datacenter editions specifically- no one mentioned Small Business Server 2008, which is what I run.
My particular license is 'Standard', supposedly with 5 CALs, however it's also an OEM version purchased from NewEgg.com & apparently they don't issue the CALs that were supposed to come with it.

According to Microsoft's licensing calculator, one would need 4 Datacenter licenses at a cost of over $9K US to run a VM across 2 physical servers- even without it virtualizing anything nested.
I hope I'm misinterpreting the zeros listed under the other license types so that maybe it means "doesn't matter" as opposed to "you can't".

 

[tom]

You mixed Microsoft HA with Proxmox VE.

You do not need to buy any license for running Proxmox VE 1.x or Proxmox VE 2.x with HA - you just need to respect the GPL v2 license terms.

 

[fortechitsolutions]

Hi JustaGuy,

Just to echo Tom's comments / and reiterate & clarify from my earlier post on this topic; I believe Microsoft still consider an offline VM to be a zero-license entity, and a running VM to be a 1-license entity. With the HA features coming in Proxmox VE 2.0 (and with the "Live Migration" features already present in 1.5, which I'm suspecting will be the underpinning of the HA - at least in part) -- you are not running multiple instances of your VM; you have one instance which is run on any of a number of ProxVE servers in your hardware pool. Live Migration (or HA) features are provided by ProxVE, not by Microsoft, so you don't have to pay MS licenses for functionality you happen to obtain from an amazing open source virtualization platform This is also entirely independent of the version of operating system you are running on ProxVE - WinServer 2008, SBS2008, BSD, Linux, etc etc

As an 'unrelated' footnote: If you bought electronically licensed MS Server and CALs - typically you need to have a "microsoft license portal" setup / often which requires a 'microsoft passport' userID and Password associated with it; and you manage your CALs from this central location; often you get an 'enabler' key (via email if you are lucky) from your vendor that you gave $$ to when buying the MS product; you then punch the info into your MS license portal, and it tracks all your CALs and other licenses (how many instances/licenses of Windows Server, XP pro, CALs, etc etc .. you may have bought). Certainly physical certificates / paper -- are a thing of the past when managing MS Licenses - but I'm not sure what you mean when you say, "newegg won't give you the 5 cals that should have come with your OEM SBS2008 Std). Clearly, the intricacies of licensing are just another reason why open-source OS / software is so nice - you don't feel driven to distraction after spending (days/hours/weeks) dealing with overly complex license structures. Oops! you want more than 4 gigs of Ram in your server - time to play the license game!

--Tim