MS Windows Server Licensing in HA Cluster

[zetwo]

Hi, i have a question about Microsoft licensing in a cluster.

Our setup we have 3 Servers in a Cluster with Ceph:
px1 28 Cores
px2 28 Cores
px3 28 Cores

We are planing to setup 4x MS Windows Server 2019 Standard in the Cluster.
Because of Microsoft Licensing i would have to purchase licenses for 168 Cores.
We are planing to add new SSDs to the Cluster anyway.
The question is if we setup the new SSDs on one host in normal raid and install the windows server to theme then Live migration is not longer possible so it think we then should only have to license 1 Server instead of all 3

 

[wolfgang]

Hi,

I think you will get no clear answer to this question.
Not even from Microsoft because this is not defined, and this is IMHO, it is also intended.

 

[LnxBil]

I think you will get no clear answer to this question.
Not even from Microsoft because this is not defined, and this is IMHO, it is also intended.

If this would be an Oracle licensing problem, Oracle counts also nodes that are part of a share-nothing-HA setup. As long as the VM can be live migrated to another node in the cluster, all sockets (or even cores in Enterprise Edition) has to be licensed. This is a huge show stopper, because you can always do that nowadays in any virtualisation product.

If there is a licensing management service (as it is with Oracle LMS), you can ask them to write you an contract for your exact environment if you want to be sure legalwise.

We are planing to setup 4x MS Windows Server 2019 Standard in the Cluster.

I don't know about the 2019 licensing, but in previous versions, there was the datacenter edition that allowed as many virtual machines as you like but you need to license all sockets and nodes in your cluster.

 

[zetwo]

If this would be an Oracle licensing problem, Oracle counts also nodes that are part of a share-nothing-HA setup. As long as the VM can be live migrated to another node in the cluster, all sockets (or even cores in Enterprise Edition) has to be licensed. This is a huge show stopper, because you can always do that nowadays in any virtualisation product.

I understand that when live migration is possible that i have to license everything . My idea is that if i don't have a shared storage (only for the Windows VMs) live migration will be impossible and so i would not have to pay for the other servers. The tricky thing is that for other VMs on the same node (Linux VMs on the ceph storage)
Live migration would still be possible but in my mind this should not concern Microsoft but i´m not sure about that and as wolfgang pointed out, i probably wont get an definitive answer.

I don't know about the 2019 licensing, but in previous versions, there was the data center edition that allowed as many virtual machines as you like but you need to license all sockets and nodes in your cluster.

I know about the data center edition but it gets very expensive for our use case and i would like to avoid it.

Thanks for the suggestions so far

 

[LnxBil]

My idea is that if i don't have a shared storage (only for the Windows VMs) live migration will be impossible and so i would not have to pay for the other servers.

As I tried to say, we already have share-nothing live migration so that does not apply anymore. Oracle specifically states that you can do that and therefore every node in a stretched or flex cluster (or what the correct VMware terminology is) has to be licensed. If MS is also interpreting things this way, you may run in a problem there. Due to this licensing problems, it's often much cheaper to not virtualise Oracle and run it on hardware (use Real Application Cluster instead of VM-HA).