[windows software] Hell with Microsoft Licensing!!!!! :(

[pritchardavid]

Need some help here guys, been trying to get this sorted, but different companies seem to be telling us different things, its even got to the point the that our agreement is expired!! We have something like 30 days to get it sorted.

 

What we want/need

 

• 135x Staff FTE EES - Desktop Education Package (Enterprise CALs, Office, Windows, MDOP)
  

 

 

• 8x SQL Server Per Core (Would this be fine for two dedicated virtual servers, 4 cores in each, would both of these be able to hack all these products, running between them, SharePoint, Lync, APP-V, System Centre Suite, 2x small databases for two pieces of SEN software, or is more cores/virtual servers needed ?
  

 

 

• 6x Server Datacentre
  
• 7x Server Standard
  
• 30x Multipoint CALs
  
• 3x Multipoint Server
  
• 7x System Centre Standard (Management Server Licence)
  
• 6x System Centre Enterprise (Management Server Licence)
  
• 1x UAG Server
  
• 135x UAG CALs
  
• 1x UAG External Connector
  
• 1x SharePoint Server
  
• 1x Exchange Server Standard
  
• 1x Lync Server
  
• 2x Remote Desktop External Connectors (For Students)
  
• 135x Remote Desktop CALs for Staff
  
• 135x UAG CALs
  
• 1x UAG External Connector
  

Things I’m Not Sure On

I have heard that if students use their own computers at home and access any services the CALs from the Desktop Education Package using Staff FTE EES is not valid. I heard the CALs are only valid accessing services from equipment/devices owned by the Academy. Is this true?

So this would mean students can’t

 

• Login to Remote Desktop Server externally because they don’t have valid server CALs.
  
• Use Office on the Remote Desktop Server externally, as they don’t have a valid Office licence.
  
• Use Exchange externally because they don’t have valid Exchange CALs.
  
• Use Lync Server Externally because they don’t have valid Lync CALs (That’s fine I think. We will only want staff to use this I think, need to check this)
  
• Use SharePoint Externally because they don’t have valid SharePoint CALs.
  

UAG – Does this use Staff FTE count and if so, can students use this externally with the UAG External Connector?

 

Sorry for the long post. J

Edited February 3, 2013 by pritchardavid

[CyberNerd]

I have heard that if students use their own computers at home and access any services the CALs from the Desktop Education Package using Staff FTE EES is not valid. I heard the CALs are only valid accessing services from equipment/devices owned by the Academy. Is this true?

So this would mean students can’t

 

• Login to Remote Desktop Server externally because they don’t have valid server CALs.
  
• Use Office on the Remote Desktop Server externally, as they don’t have a valid Office licence.
  
• Use Exchange externally because they don’t have valid Exchange CALs.
  
• Use Lync Server Externally because they don’t have valid Lync CALs (That’s fine I think. We will only want staff to use this I think, need to check this)
  
• Use SharePoint Externally because they don’t have valid SharePoint CALs.
  

 

That sounds about right - to license office at home (you need and office pro license to run it over terminal services) you need the 365 A3 plan @£.90 per student per month.

 

Compare Office 365 Plans and Pricing for Schools - Office 365

 

I think with exchange you need the external connector license.

Edited February 3, 2013 by CyberNerd

[pritchardavid]

Seems not for Exchange, just had a search - Office 365 comes just a tad too expensive £27k (1.90 x 12 for months x 1200 for about number of students we have), that's without anything else. There is a option for students called student options, wondering if you can choose what you want from that, surly we would only need SharePoint, Exchange, Windows Server CALs & Office and maybe UAG if the External Connector is not Remote Desktop where students can use that. Maybe move students to free office 365 for Exchange, so we don't have to buy Exchange CALs, only problem with that is I want the 2013 edition, think that is still running 2010 ................. Exchange External connector licence details

 

If you have external users (e.g., business partners, suppliers, customers, retirees, and alumni) who need to access your Exchange server, the external connector license grants access to the Exchange server by an unlimited number of these external users.

Edited February 3, 2013 by pritchardavid

[CyberNerd]

Seems not for Exchange, just had a search - Office 365 comes just a tad too expensive £27k (1.90 x 12 for months x 1200 for about number of students we have), that's without anything else.

Yeah, the pricing is insane if you want students to use ms office at home or BYOD and get all of the SharePoint functionality. Our solution was simply to ditch ms office and use a mix of Google apps and libre office. Its saving us £40k per year and staff/students get access to all their files on all devices with all the collaboration features they need.

[tmcd35]

You're right about SQL per core. It's sold as a minimum of 4-cores per instance so an 8-core license would net you 2 instances. That said your System Center stuff each comes with their own SQL standard license. So for each individual item in the System Center suite you can run them on their own individual SQL servers separate from everything else. As for the rest I can't say but generally, if you chuck enough RAM at it I'm SQL Server could cope with most things

[synaesthesia]

If you're not sure, fire an email to the guys at Phoenix Software - [email protected] - these guys are fantastically helpful (and patient which is a must, especially when you've got something as complicated as MS licensing and muppets like me trying to understand it!) who are really good at explaining things in plain English to you. If you tell them exactly what you need, they will happily let you know the most cost effective way of getting it.

[RTFM]

We have always run our licensing questions by @Millgate and he has always come back with the answers (and pricing) we were looking for

[X-13]

It's things like this that make me want to move away from Microsoft...

[Millgate]

Just sent an email to our MS guy for you David. I'll let you know asap

[tmcd35]

It's things like this that make me want to move away from Microsoft...

 

I agree, but what to? For all it's faults AD and GPO's are amazingly powerful and I'm yet to see any competing system that can match, let alone better, it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you can't effectively manage networks with Linux or OS X or Netware, etc, but there is something about AD that makes network management a relative breeze, IMHO.

[AngryTechnician]

This sort of nonsense where MS partners don't seem to understand the pricing model is one of the things that @witch, @elsiegee40 and I had a blast about at a meeting with the Microsoft UK education managers a couple of years back. Unfortunately, Microsoft were (and still are) convinced that all their partners understand the licensing perfectly.

[tmcd35]

Unfortunately, Microsoft were (and still are) convinced that all their partners understand the licensing perfectly.

 

 

Microsoft don't understand their own licensing; what hope do the resellers have?

[CyberNerd]

This sort of nonsense where MS partners don't seem to understand the pricing model is one of the things that @witch, @elsiegee40 and I had a blast about at a meeting with the Microsoft UK education managers a couple of years back. Unfortunately, Microsoft were (and still are) convinced that all their partners understand the licensing perfectly.

 

I don't think its that the partners don't understand the licensing model - I'm sure they know full well the real costs of supplying MSOffice at home, and that schools won't be able to afford it. If schools will move away from MS because of this it will hit the re-sellers revenue stream.

We've had several VDI and terminal services specialist who basically encouraged us to run MSSoftware in a way that we know was unlicensed just so they could get a sale.

[KeithMPhoenix]

There are other Student options available now especially around Office - your AER or LAR (or MS Business Manager) will be able to talk to you about these.

[CyberNerd]

There are other Student options available now especially around Office - your AER or LAR (or MS Business Manager) will be able to talk to you about these.

 

well could you give us a ball park figure that would allow us to run 1750 copies of MSOffice on students home pc's via terminal service? - MS said it was the A3 plan@£1.90 per user per month ==£40,000 per year + the 1750 copies of TS License CAL's @£10.50 ea.

[KeithMPhoenix]

I cant quote you as we are not sponsors so I dont want to seen as touting for business - I sit on here just to help where I can as I appreciate these things can be a minefield :-). It depends on how you want to do it and if there is flexibility. You are right the terminal option can be very expensive but it should be less than the 40k you mention if you look at the plans and the various student options - we have also started to see schools look at alternatives and using the logical groupings around the Office options as a way to bring costs down however this does of course not provide the desktop experience of using something such as RDS, VMware View etc

Your AER or EdLAR will be able to cost model all the options over a number of years so you can see whats best.

Edited February 6, 2013 by KeithMPhoenix

[Gibson335]

I would like to interject this: whilst I cannot and will not name names, I was put in touch with a senior educational business manager for education who told me that provided you informed users they had to have the same version of Office on the station that was remoting into the TS, and provided you did everything you could to police that, Microsoft would take the stance that you were doing your best to remain within the legal parameters, and that if an audit did kick off about it, you'd be given time to remedy the situation and they would work with you over a period of time.

 

I would add that this was the third person I spoke to there, and was the third different response I received.

[CyberNerd]

^ not sure I'd be happy putting my career (and the reputation of the school) on the line because some unnamed person may have said we could 'get away with it' until we are audited.

nearly 2000 potentially unlicensed machines would be taken quite seriously by the courts. I'd like to see that in writing - everyone I have spoken to (apart from the odd dodgy re-seller looking for a quick buck) has told me it needs to be licensed correctly.

[Gibson335]

^ not sure I'd be happy putting my career (and the reputation of the school) on the line because some unnamed person may have said we could 'get away with it' until we are audited.

nearly 2000 potentially unlicensed machines would be taken quite seriously by the courts. I'd like to see that in writing - everyone I have spoken to (apart from the odd dodgy re-seller looking for a quick buck) has told me it needs to be licensed correctly.

 

I didn't offer it as advice. Simply relating what happened.

[CyberNerd]

I didn't offer it as advice. Simply relating what happened.

 

understood. I could understand that a senior MS business manager may offer that as advice to stop a school changing to a different product.

[aleach2]

It’s my understanding that you would have to buy external connector licenses for the programs you want the students to access. This is where it gets complicated. You have to purchase an external connector license for every application you are running e.g.

 

You have an Exchange Server running on one server, you would need:

 

1 x Windows Server external connector license

1 x Exchange external connector license

 

Also if you had a SharePoint Server using two servers with the database held on just one of the servers:

 

1 x Windows Server external connector license

2 x SharePoint external connector license

1 x SQL external connector license

 

You basically have to get an external connector license for every server and service a user may touch directly or indirectly during their session. If you wanted to run an RDS server things get really messy.

 

You could look at using Office 365 or some kind of hosted solution. If you speak to a MS licensing partner, they should be able to get you the right solution together. You may want to talk to then regarding your UAG external connector too, as I think this may allow you to run services from home without the need for external connector licenses but I’m not 100%.

 

Good luck

[TronXP]

Licensing Office on Remote Desktop Services - Welcome to the US SMB&D TS2 Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs This makes good reading in regards to office

[Gibson335]

Licensing Office on Remote Desktop Services - Welcome to the US SMB&D TS2 Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs This makes good reading in regards to office

 

The issue here is, if you have 1000 student users, a number of them are likely to already have the latest version of Office. An audit of the student user base is, perhaps, a good place to start. Why licence their use if they already are? Alternatively, save your money and use GoogleApps instead ;-)

[Cache]

See, thinking about this I would probably consider the following licencing to see how it would compare:

 

Core CAL Suite (User & Device) - Student Offering/Option

Windows Server™ 2012 Remote Desktop Services CAL - Student Offering/Option

 

My probably naieve assumption being if you licence your student count under the student offering/option for both the Core CAL Suite as per user and you licence the RDS CAL under the student option, then you have everything covered under there (RDS CAL for your students to connect and then the Core CAL pack would cover access to your servers within the Windows CAL and Office under the Office CAL).

 

Looking through the product list, there is a student offering/option available for the UAG, so I would guess that's not covered under the staff FTE for student devices either.

 

I'd like to live in a logical simple world though so I'm probably way off.