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Re: Windows licensing (reprise)

 

IANAL, but this link from Microsoft makes it sound like Windows Server Standard will work for your case:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.microsoft.com%2Fdownload%2F7%2F7%2F0%2F7707E736-4557-4310-9709-87358F7E6D1A%2FWindowsServer2012VirtualTech_VLBrief.pdf&ei=YMTgUcXNNeeaiAL9g4H4Aw&usg=AFQjCNHVFeEE4c__48Pw3v1M8sHyxh27PQ&sig2=ImQtCewwqrAzwQ_X4aTlMA&bvm=bv.48705608,d.cGE

(Sorry for the terrible link - here is a shorter one http://bit.ly/1bwce9l )

From what I read, it appears you can run two Windows VMs for every standard license. I would strongly suggest running that by your legal team before taking my word.

  -Carl

On 07/12/2013 07:35 PM, JR wrote:
Greetings,

I know that this topic has been touched upon in another forum thread (http://www.mail-archive.com/openstack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg20032.html) but I'd like to get the community's feedback on what I've been told about windows licensing on openstack by our IT people, who've had calls with MS.

Apparently, there is no way to license a single windows VM running on openstack. The only way to legally (!) license windows in a cloud is to buy a datacenter license. This license which would apply to each physical compute node. Let's say that the cost for that license is $4600. In our environment, since we need high availability and any particular windows VM would need to run on any of our 4 compute nodes, we'd be in ~$18400. The above would allow us to run an unlimited number of windows OSes.

The problem, for us, is that we only need to run a few odd, but critical windows instances. $18400 is pretty steep and we'd love to just pay for the VMs individually. Does anyone know how to do that? Is it obvious to anyone that my information is (obviously) incorrect?

Thanks much,
JR

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