[windows software] EES Renewel. - Server std vs Server Ent

[Sam_Brown]

Evening All,

 

Just getting round to doing some Microsoft licensing for the first time.

 

We're in our second year of our EES agreement and it's to do with our Server Licensing.

 

We have 17 Physical Servers. I've got a few quotes on this. Our existing company is quoting 17x Server Enterprise at something like ~80 quid per unit. Another company is quoting 34x Server Standard at something like ~30 quid per unit.

 

According to the second supplier, Server Enterprise licensing is now a thing of the past and if you want to be covered you can now do so by buying 2x Standard Licenses. Which actually works out cheaper.

 

This is good for us as it's obviously cheaper. But I'm not convinced. Licensing seems a very complicated area so wanted some advice from the fine people on here if possible.

 

Hope someone is in the know...

[tech-man]

Yep looking at this as well: I'm told its standard & data centre - and it's based on physical processor.

[FN-GM]

Yep Enterprise has gone. We have data centre for the virtual hosts & Standard for physical servers.

[teejay]

We're all virtualised apart from the backup server, so it's all but one are data center.

Are you on a 3 year agreement or starting a new 1 year as when we were on a 3 year schools agreement we couldn't remove products or lower the head count, only keep it the same or increase it or add new products. I don't know if this is the same on EES but it may be the case that you still have to licence to enterprise level, not sure though and it may be worth checking.

[Sam_Brown]

So 2x Standard = 1 Ent?

 

Or am I being mugged off?

[tech-man]

No it's done per physical processor per server.

[Sam_Brown]

No it's done per physical processor per server.

 

So if I have 17 Physical Servers with Windows Enterprise on I only need 17 Standard Licenses? And not 34 like I was quoted?

[Arthur]

So if I have 17 Physical Servers with Windows Enterprise on I only need 17 Standard Licenses? And not 34 like I was quoted?

Correct. As long as your servers do not have more than two physical CPUs.

 

Q9. How do I calculate the number of licenses I need for a server?

The number of licenses you will need depends on the number of physical processors on the server and the number of server instances that you will be running. (This only applies for Standard edition because Datacenter edition allows for unlimited VMs.) The larger of these two numbers determines the number of total licenses required.

 

Determining the number of physical processor licenses

Each license covers up to two physical processors, so to determine the number of licenses needed to fully license a physical server, simply count the number of physical processors in the server, divide that number by two and that tells you the number of licenses that will be needed.

Here are some examples:

 

• You have a 2-processor server. 2 physical processors / 2 (number of processors covered by a license) equals 1. You will need one license to cover a 2-processor server.
  
• You have a 4-processor server. 4 physical processors / 2 (number of processors covered by a license) equals 2. You will need two licenses to cover a 4-processor server.
  
• You have an 8-processor server. 8 physical processors / 2 (number of processors covered by a license) equals 4. You will need four licenses to cover an 8-processor server.
  

 

Source: Microsoft

 

Do you have any plans to virtualise in the future?

[Sam_Brown]

We have already virtualised about 20 servers. For the 3 hosts we're going to be purchasing Data Centre Licenses so that should cover us for those.

 

It was just the 17 Enterprise Servers. I wasn't sure how to license those seeing as I have been getting mixed messages from our suppliers.

 

The other thing I've been getting mixed messages over is the fact we're halfway through our agreement so different rules may apply?

[Frazer]

If youre already in the middle of an agreement _and_ you have Software Assurance, your enterprise 2008 r2 licences are worth 2x standard 2012 licences.

 

So, of your current 17x 2008 R2 Enterprise Licences you could have 16x physical servers running 2008 R2 Enterprise/Standard and 2x physical servers (with 2 processors each) running 2012 standard.

 

Or, you could have 16x physical running 2008 r2 enterprise and a 1x physical 2012 standard but running 4 VMs (using the remaining licence for the additional 2 VMs - 2012 std only allows 2 VMs per licence)

 

Think thats right, might have to double check on the VM licences.

 

EDIT: Just checked, when using the 2 VM's, your physical host can ONLY be used to manage the hyper-v guest OS's, you cant run other roles on the physical install. You can also use 1x 2012 Std licence to add another 2 Windows Server VM's.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Frazer