Microsoft hopes to clear up Hyper-V licensing confusion by offering hosting providers a new guide Microsoft is making a commitment to winning the hosting provider market with its Hyper-V virtualization platform. This has been an area that Parallels and Xen have been championing for quite some time now. In order to demonstrate their effectiveness at doing so, Microsoft has released a “Hyper-V Hosting Guide” that documents how to use and license Microsoft Server products within a Hyper-V virtual hosting scenario. The guide explains how to leverage Service Provider License Agreements (SPLAs) to different editions of Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 in a virtualized hosting environment. The SPLA has two licensing models — Per Processor and Per Subscriber (via a Subscriber Access License, or SAL). In a virtual environment, there are no new restrictions on the number of instances running under the SAL licensing model. However, the Per-Processor model introduces new considerations, which are outlined in this guide. The 28-page document covers the following common Hyper-V based virtualized hosting scenarios:Unmanaged dedicated server with Hyper-V Virtual dedicated server (VDS) for Web scenarios (using Windows Server guests in anonymous mode) Virtual dedicated server with line-of-business (LOB) scenarios (using Windows Server guests in authenticated mode) Use of virtualization in shared hosting scenarios Desktops as Hyper-V guests End customers running Microsoft products using the customers own licenses on the guest OSDownload: Hyper-V Hosting Guidance: Using and Licensing Microsoft Server Products in Hyper-V Virtual Hosting Scenarios. Software Development