Terminal Server and Office

[Gibson335]

Having just confirmed licensing with Microsoft on this thorny issue, I was wondering how other people 'police' student use of Office via a TS connection.

[Ric_]

According to MS licensing, you have to have a license for the connecting 'device' if Office is available on the terminal server. Short of licensing every single PC, Mac, Linux box, PDA, smartphone... in the world you cannot ensure that the client device has the license. As such you cannot offer MS Office on an externally available terminal server.

 

Products such as AppSense (or to a certain degree using published applications) can target specific users and limit the number of instances that run at any one time. However, the Office licensing model is not 'per user' not is it 'concurrent' so neither of these way will work either.

 

The upshot of it is, you have to uninstall MS Office.

[Gatt]

Not got an active VPN for pupils yet, but I would "police" it the same way as internally - they will use a Connection Manager installation that will force them to use a Remote Desktop and thus pick up their own profiles..

 

Other than the predefined RDP conenction, they will have no other access to the network

[Gatt]

How does TS licencing work with a Schools Agreement VL ?

[Gibson335]

According to MS licensing, you have to have a license for the connecting 'device' if Office is available on the terminal server. Short of licensing every single PC, Mac, Linux box, PDA, smartphone... in the world you cannot ensure that the client device has the license. As such you cannot offer MS Office on an externally available terminal server.

 

Products such as AppSense (or to a certain degree using published applications) can target specific users and limit the number of instances that run at any one time. However, the Office licensing model is not 'per user' not is it 'concurrent' so neither of these way will work either.

 

The upshot of it is, you have to uninstall MS Office.

 

That's not strictly accurate. Yes, it has to be licensed per device, and so of course you can still make Office available via TS. The onus is on the school to 'police' it, but that's not to say that you can ever be 100% accurate. The task in hand is to audit our users, and as such we will be seen to be 'policing' it, but I was looking for some info on who had already done this and how.

[DMcCoy]

Office applications remain unchanged for any volume license, you *always* license the machine running or connecting to a remote office.

 

The primary issue is that users are potentially using *your* copy of Office illegally moving the responsibility to the school.

 

It's fine if you are only connecting from machines you know are licensed to use it, such as those on site and covered by normal license or VL agreement. With 2007 this becomes even more complicated because the type of office license also matters. Only 2007 enterprise likes to be installed on a TS, meaning client license will also need to match the version installed.

 

So, for uses when you can't control the machines connecting, as Ric_ mentioned, it's no office or an alternative.

[Gibson335]

Not got an active VPN for pupils yet, but I would "police" it the same way as internally - they will use a Connection Manager installation that will force them to use a Remote Desktop and thus pick up their own profiles..

 

Other than the predefined RDP conenction, they will have no other access to the network

 

Sorry, this was strictl;y about 'policing' use of Office - basically, auditing users regards relevant licensed copies of Office on the connecting device.

[Gibson335]

Office applications remain unchanged for any volume license, you *always* license the machine running or connecting to a remote office.

 

The primary issue is that users are potentially using *your* copy of Office illegally moving the responsibility to the school.

 

It's fine if you are only connecting from machines you know are licensed to use it, such as those on site and covered by normal license or VL agreement. With 2007 this becomes even more complicated because the type of office license also matters. Only 2007 enterprise likes to be installed on a TS, meaning client license will also need to match the version installed.

 

So, for uses when you can't control the machines connecting, as Ric_ mentioned, it's no office or an alternative.

 

In our case, we are licensed for 2007 but use 2003 internally and on the TS, so we are covered - but I take your point about 2007, which may make a mess of the whole thing.

[dhicks]

I was wondering how other people 'police' student use of Office via a TS connection.

 

We'll simply only let PCs with a given VPN/SSH key file in to our Terminal Server, and we'll only dish out keys to computers with licenses for MS Office. I plan to solve further issues by making all new workstations in the school Ubuntu based...

 

--

David Hicks

[Gibson335]

'Only 2007 enterprise likes to be installed on a TS...'

 

This was written in one of the posts above...can anyone tell me why only the Enterprise version is suitable for TS installation?

 

Thanks.

[DMcCoy]

It seems to have been updated, it only needs a volume license version now. You get an error if it's not a VL key.

 

Error message when you try to start a 2007 Office program within a Terminal Server client session: "This copy of Microsoft Office <Program> cannot be used on Terminal Server"

[Gibson335]

Thanks for that - sounds much better.

[GoldenWonder]

If you bought Office under a Select/Open license then the At Home rights allow Staff (not students) to use a copy of Office on their home PC as well. This means they have the right to use it via TS as well. We only allow remote access to staff at the moment, so their 'work' pc and 'home' are the licensed ones.

 

MS really need to look into this one - hwo on earth is anyone supposed to license Office over TS and keep it legitimate! I've spoken to about 5 different resellers and MS people and had about 5 different answers.

[Gibson335]

Cheers. I was aware of the rule regards staff, etc, but as you rightly say, if you speak to even MS themselves you can get a whole variety of answers, which could cost you between nothing and tends of thousands of pounds for the same licensing...they really should sort this out for schools.