Microsoft Details Windows Server 2003 Licensing with Virtualization Technologies

When you read about Microsoft Windows Server licensing, more often than not, the message is negative. Microsoft seems to be taking it on the chin a lot, but really for such a large software company, I think they are doing a fairly good job at trying to define and structure their licensing with respect to today’s virtualized infrastructure. After all, there are other software companies out there that are still trying to license their software on a pure physical server basis without any regard to virtualization whatsoever.

For me, Microsoft’s first step was creating a virtualization friendly license for Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise and Datacenter editions and SQL Server 2005 Enterprise edition.

The second positive step was when Microsoft detailed its licensing strategy with the creation of their Virtualization Calculators.

And now, it appears as though Microsoft is hoping to finally answer these licensing questions with something written down for all to read. The company has produced a new whitepaper or licensing brief that outlines how the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 operating system and other Microsoft server products are licensed when used with virtualization platforms such as Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware ESX Server and SWsoft Virtuozzo. In addition, it answers licensing questions about the use of virtualization technologies such as VMware VMotion and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

The introduction states:

To run Microsoft server software on a server, you must first assign the server a license. By assigning this license, you are designating a server to run an instance of Microsoft server software. In addition, you have the right to run as many instances on that server as the software allows-regardless of what kind of operating system environment (OSE) is present.

There are two types of OSEs: physical and virtual. A physical OSE is configured to run directly on a physical hardware system and can be physical and/or virtual. A virtual OSE is configured to run on a virtual-or otherwise emulated-hardware system. This distinction is vital to understanding how to license virtualization technologies; regardless of the type, each instance running requires a license.

To better understand the difference between physical and virtual OSEs, consider the following: Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition permits one running instance at a time, while Enterprise Edition permits up to five-one instance running in a physical operating system environment and four instances running in a virtual OSE. If you choose to run five instances at a time under the Enterprise Edition license, the instance of the software running in the physical OSE may only be used to run hardware virtualization software and software to manage and service OSEs on the licensed server.

You can read the entire document, here.