@scottalanmiller said in Microsoft Office - Licensing Questions For 3 Scenarios: @flaxking said in Microsoft Office - Licensing Questions For 3 Scenarios: I think you must be missing what's going on here. This removes the requirement to integrate more directly with MS Office, instead relying on a separate library that is provided standalone from Office and thus allows saving to Excel. We've had zero issues with using this library, which is actually pretty uncommon for us. The issue is flexibility. Using third party libraries, you can integrate with Excel or with anything else. Using the Office libraries, every user, in ever system, is bound by the limitations of the most problematic. It makes deployments more costly, and more complex. That's true, it's the kind of self perpetuating lock-in that has served Microsoft so well. People use Excel, and they ask for saving to Excel spreadsheet, so we create the integration specially to allow Excel and not include ODF, then we help keep the industry locked into using Excel because that's all we support unless you want to just save to CSV. As for the cost and complexity of deployments... that could be true, except that the installation of our main software is already so complex and costly that dealing with potentially installing this library is the easiest part. I think we probably only have one other developer who would be able to figure out how to install it. I've never heard of any client's IT that have been able to figure out how to install it (just calls from those who have tried), client services has to do literally every install.

added tags

@pmoncho said in The Hidden Cost of Licensing Windows Server - Activation: @scottalanmiller said in The Hidden Cost of Licensing Windows Server - Activation: Just looking at this with a customer that just put in a new Windows 2019 server. The machine was purchased with a volume license agreement for Server 2019 Standard. Everything should be super easy, in theory. Problem is, license key from the volume license center doesn't work. We spend a bit of time trying to get this to apply, but no luck. I have run into a similar situation this morning and not being able activate the VLSC liscense. Before I decided to call MS and getting frustrated, I was able to activate from an elevated command line. cscript c:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs /ipk <product key> Throwing this out here in case someone comes along this post at a later time. I've heard that that often works. We had tried that in our case and it had failed.

@dbeato said in Windows 10 IOT Enterprise: @dafyre said in Windows 10 IOT Enterprise: @Dashrender said in Windows 10 IOT Enterprise: Though - now that I think about it - does IOT require activation? I thought it was free? If there is an enterprise version of IOT - I have no clue In my reading, Windows 10 IOT will attempt to activate (nor will it complain) if you never connect the device to the internet. Of course, once you connect it, it will try to activate. Interesting, I didn't understand this part By default, KMS clients on your Windows IoT Enterprise with no additional configuration needed. It will act like a regular desktop and activate against your KMS server if you hook it up to the network.

@scottalanmiller said in REDIS changes its open-source license again: Looks like it is only some modules... https://redis.io/modules This is all the previous change was also.

@DustinB3403 said in Backup Options - Licensing Costs - Storage Targets: @dafyre said in Backup Options - Licensing Costs - Storage Targets: When we start looking, we'll start with the usual culprits like Veeam. ShadowProtect comes highly recommended to me by several folks (Including the guy who just built the ReadyNAS)... We'd hit the other major players as well. So cost is going to bite you in the ass, since you said there were concerns about licensing. But they are all valid options. @dafyre said in Backup Options - Licensing Costs - Storage Targets: Good Backup Compression / Deduplication is a must. We have ~30TB of systems and data. You can perform the compression on your storage layer or use dedup or both. This may affect the overall performance though. @dafyre said in Backup Options - Licensing Costs - Storage Targets: We don't care if it's full install, agent based, or Hypervisor based. It just needs to work. Based on this I would think Agent based would be a decent option. But didn't you say you have something along the lines of 300 VMs? Might become tedious. Yeah, we'd likely do the dedupe at the Storage layer. Our Current Nimble devices do this relatively well with our live data. Something like 1.3 or 1.4 to 1 compression is what i remember. It may be more or less. If we went Agent based, we can push the agents via PDQ Deploy for Windows and a shell script or something for Linux. (Most of our Production Linux systems are SLES 12)... If reboots are required, systems can be rebooted during our patch window... (5-7am every day).

@PhlipElder said in Windows Server Upgrade - MS Retail, Open, Open Value or Open Value Subscription: @pmoncho said in Windows Server Upgrade - MS Retail, Open, Open Value or Open Value Subscription: Is there anyone out there using OV non-company wide with spread payments? If so, I am trying to find out if I should purchase all licenses that I think I MAY need upfront? If I can add to my license (additional CAL's or Server License), how is it calculated if it is during middle of the license year? All of our clients, and us too, run Open Value Agreement with the spread payment option. Company-wide was too restrictive so we never did go with it. Here are the numbers I get using MS License Advisor (for part numbers) with pcm.com pricing. Does that look roughly correct?

@DustinB3403 said in Server license or VDI (or possibly desktop with Desktop Windows OS)?: @pchiodo said in Server license or VDI (or possibly desktop with Desktop Windows OS)?: Probably do not need a server license. Most of these type of apps can be run in Client/Server mode on a desktop so I think you would be fine. Bigger question is how many people are going to use the app? Just one? then a desktop or a VDI would be fine. If there is more than 5 accessing then I would move to a 3 tier with a VM using Windows Server. The number of users is actually irrelevant. What matters is the number of concurrent connections and the type of content being hosted. This would fall outside of what MS has allowed in the Desktop licensing. Depends on the mode... number via SMB, doesn't matter. Number by RDP matters.

@dbeato said in Using Windows 10 Public ISO with VLSC MAK: Sot it just activated it right? Yup.

@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse: Microsoft started pulling Security patches off of their servers after your contract expires but the platform is still supported. Microsoft no longer provides patches for XP Server 2003 unless you pay them a lot of extra money. It's basically a license with security updates for a fixed interval that can be extended for a ton of money...

@StorageNinja said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing: @scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing: if you are a SaaS vendor looking at building software that uses MongoDB somewhere, you'd better get a lawyer looking over this license and how it applies to you. This is becoming a bigger issue as the biggest SaaS vendors hide behind this clause more and more with incredibly proprietary forks. They offer very little to no actual core development or contribution and it goes against the previous method of GPL code getting funding. It annoys me, as the legal headaches of contributing internal only use code back will block some companies from using OSS, but I see it both ways. The startups who are doing a lot of the core housekeeping of NOSQL platforms are learning they can't find a business model. This is getting messier and messier. Partially because there are just too any vendors involved. What's amazing, though, is that a move like this took a customer who was very into MongoDB and using it in projects and was literally working with MongoDB's own hosted product and now looking to avoid it like the plague. So at least in this one case, they are likely losing hosted product from this. And gaining nothing. I imagine a lot of customers going through this same process.

@gjacobse said in Activating Windows 10 with Windows 7 Keys Today: @scottalanmiller said in Activating Windows 10 with Windows 7 Keys Today: @gjacobse said in Activating Windows 10 with Windows 7 Keys Today: @DustinB3403 said in Activating Windows 10 with Windows 7 Keys Today: @gjacobse said in Activating Windows 10 with Windows 7 Keys Today: @aaronstuder said in Activating Windows 10 with Windows 7 Keys Today: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/142616/yes-can-still-clean-install-windows-10-windows-78-x-key Article coverd up by their stupid box saying your AdBlocker is showing... Not with pihole. I'm running one.... You sure it is working? I'm no genius... but it shows it's working the Pi-Hole is running, you sure that that is what you are using for your DNS? Check with nslookup

@dbeato said in Vultr, Windows & Data center licensing: @scottalanmiller said in Vultr, Windows & Data center licensing: @fuznutz04 said in Vultr, Windows & Data center licensing: @scottalanmiller Right. So being legit in this scenario, would be so cost prohibitive, it's not possible realistically. Exactly. It's not technically impossible, as long as Vultr would tell you the number of physical servers within the datacenter you are in and/or the number that are in a pool that your workload could be moved to, which might be any within the datacenter, or might be a subset. Same applies to AWS and Azure I assume correct @scottalanmiller ? Correct, any cloud.

@scottalanmiller said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @phlipelder said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): Hi friends. I am working on building a new physical server to replace one which is running older versions of Windows and SQL server, plus it is almost out of storage space so this needs to be done sooner than later. This SQL server is running a 3rd party application and they currently only support up to SQL 2016, so that's what I have to install - not 2017. And it's going to be SQL 2016 Standard Edition running on Windows 2016 Server Standard with 16 cores. I spent a while researching SQL sever licensing to try and get an idea of how much it's going to cost. I haven't dealt with SQL server licensing yet. First, I assumed that I would still have to purchase SQL Server 2017 core licenses with downgrade rights. So looking on the SQL Sever Pricing page, it looks as though Standard - per core price is $3,717 (2 pack). So if my server has a total of 16 cores, this is going to cost about $29,736 to cover SQL licensing. Then I checked over on CDW just to get an idea of prices and things and I had the idea to search "SQL 2016" when I found this: SQL Server 2016 Standard - license - 16 cores - with Server 2016 Standard for like $1,900. Is this even applicable to what I'm doing or am I missing something? It does say in the technical details "BIOS locked (Lenovo)" but I have no idea what that refers to. But other than that, it looks like it's licensing SQL Server 2016 for 16 cores and bundled with Windows Server 2016. Surly this can't be correct... or is it? If it is actually what I would need to be covered, I would purchase it, of course. Otherwise, can someone help me get an idea of what I should be paying for SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition for 16 cores if not the cost I initially calculated ($29,736)? And I don't think we'd do the server + cal licensing as we have about 80 users and 100 or more systems which would connect to the SQL server. Simple rule of thumb to ask your Microsoft licensing rep for the following: First option is license + CALs that allows internal access only with unlimited instances on the server and unlimited cores: SQL Server Standard License SQL Server Standard User CALs (80 Users) Second option is per core with a minimum of 4 to purchase: SQL Server Standard Per Core 2-Pack (2x) In the Per Core scenario we can license for the number of physical cores to use and delimit that in SQL Studio Management. When it comes to audit, a snip of that setting that only allows the four threads should be just fine. So if you license + CAL, do you have to cover all users AND computers? If you license by user you cover users. If you license by device you cover devices. Well what constitutes as a device? I mean, users use a device to connect to the SQL server... so wouldn't I have to cover both? I don't get it. That is never how Microsoft CALs have worked. ok, I finally re-read the overview.. makes sense again. We have a pretty even user/device ratio with slight fluctuations in both over time. I suppose we'd just do user CALs.. There is almost no reason for anyone in the normal, day to day, business world to use device CALs. Agreed, this is super specific niche stuff normally reserved for manufacturing shift work. We have a few clients that run two or three shifts across one or more facilities. A shared device by two or three peeps per day is about the only time we've ever deployed Device CALs.

@dustinb3403 said in Verifying MS SQL Server 2017 Licensing: @jaredbusch said in Verifying MS SQL Server 2017 Licensing: @scottalanmiller said in Verifying MS SQL Server 2017 Licensing: @jaredbusch said in Verifying MS SQL Server 2017 Licensing: @scottalanmiller said in Verifying MS SQL Server 2017 Licensing: @jaredbusch one of the complications is that there IS no virtual core. vCPU is NOT core. a vCPU has vCores. Always. It might just be one. That is how it works. Not in any system I've seen. What people call vCores are actually vCPUs. The vCPU might tell the OS it has multiple cores, but the idea of a vCore has never existed, only vCPUs. Vmware, KVM, etc. all the same. Core means physical, it's like having a physical virtual, it cancels itself out. I am almost certain that VMWare lets you make a 1 CPU VM with 2 cores. Hyper-V just says virtual processors. KVM says CPUs. But I very clearly remember some hypervisor letting me specify a vCPU and vCores. XenServer and XCP-ng also allow this. 1cpu 2 core etc. Topology lets you state presented cores, not vCores. Totally different things.

@phlipelder said in Hyper-V Server 2016 guest licensing question: The guests on an OEM licensed host can be moved to another host whether it's licensed OEM, VL, or Retail so long as the destination host is licensed to receive those guests. That makes no sense. That's not moving it, that's buying it twice. Very different things. That's like "can I move my house from here to there"? People mean take the same house and shift its location. Not buy a second house in the new location and give up the old one.

If you ever need to report a Microsoft partner for ethics breaches, you can email [email protected]

@emad-r said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment: @dave247 maybe this was answered here, but I was wondering if someone can correct me on this If i put WIndows server VM with 2 cores on Hypervisor any brand which has 8 cores. Do i need to license windows server VM for 2 cores or 8 cores ? There are no cores at the VM level, those are vCPUs. Windows is licensed by cores, not by vCPUs. Cores are always physical, and the minimum is 16. No matter how you configure the VMs and vCPUs, you have to license 16 cores at a minimum. A single vCPU could use sixteen cores or more to power it, the licensing is by the available power, not the configuration.

@irj said in Thoughts on Bonanza and legality?: @scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on Bonanza and legality?: @irj said in Thoughts on Bonanza and legality?: @dustinb3403 said in Thoughts on Bonanza and legality?: Are you in the EU? If not why would you think the laws there cover you? Right, you cannot SELL your licenses in US, but what would prohibit you from buying a legally sold license? That is what I am trying to figure out. I am not selling, but looking at buying. Completely different rules in many cases. Buying them is likely legal. Using them while in the US is where the US law, rather than the EU one, would matter. The law is against selling, correct? So if you buy, is there something stating you cannot use? If there is, it would have to be in the EULA.

@flaxking said in Windows Desktop Licensing: Cannot be used as a server: @scottalanmiller said in Windows Desktop Licensing: Cannot be used as a server: @flaxking said in Windows Desktop Licensing: Cannot be used as a server: @scottalanmiller said in Windows Desktop Licensing: Cannot be used as a server: @flaxking said in Windows Desktop Licensing: Cannot be used as a server: @scottalanmiller said in Windows Desktop Licensing: Cannot be used as a server: It would mean that we could use any protocol over the Internet. There is no such thing as an Internet protocol. Things like HTTP and FTP were local LAN protocols first. The Internet made them popular and useful, of course. The web refers to specific protocols at layer 7. But Internet refers only to the layer 3 + connected to the specific public network called the Internet. Unless Microsoft tells us they're defining it differently, ^^^ this must be it I think so. Feels nutty BUT I bet they could explain some logic.... like this is just enough for some development thing or to cover some specific use case but so generally useless that they lose no money. So you would have to expose to the internet but filter to your public IP in order to be compliant and use it as something functional. Right. Or just know that there were no internal users. The licensing doesn’t require a strict enforcement system. Oh, I meant because it's probably pretty much useless to have something public facing with only 20 connections available That’s what I meant to. It’s enough for like basic testing or a five person company to do something weird. But not enough for anything real.

@olivier Definitely worth repeating this old post. Oracle has given back so much more than Amazon.

Everything detailed it here: https://products.office.com/en-us/exchange/microsoft-exchange-server-licensing-licensing-overview

@tim_g said in CALs: Silly or Not?: In that example, their authentication could have been done on their AD server (as one example), which is not a web-workload server. That's why they would then require a CAL, as they mentioned. If their authentication was done on their front-end web-workload server (web server via mangoDB as in the Mangolassi case, i think), then no CALs are needed. I tend to agree with this as well.

@eddiejennings said in Who needs an MSDN subscription?: @bigbear said in Who needs an MSDN subscription?: @tim_g said in Who needs an MSDN subscription?: @eddiejennings said in Who needs an MSDN subscription?: This thread is inspired by the never-ending thread about licensing and replication in I Can't Even. I know that developers who use Visual Studio probably get their Visual Studio license through an MSDN subscription. One benefit of the subscription is that you're allowed to spin up Windows servers, SQL servers, etc., for development and testing. For organizations who have full-on lab environments or IT staff who need to spin up a VM Windows Server VM here and there to try something out, how do they stay in compliance? Do they also buy a MSDN subscription (perhaps MSDN platforms) for the IT staff member? Do they have their IT staff continually use Windows server 180-day evaluation licenses? Do they turn a blind eye as they give their IT staff activation keys from a dev's MSDN subscription and hope their organization is never audited? MSDN subscriptions are user-specific. To stay in compliance, every person who wants to take advantage of an MSDN benefit, will need to have their own MSDN subscription. They cannot be shared. Any VM spun up under the MSDN subscription cannot be used in any way by another person. Ah, didnt read the full OP post and assumed it was for him. However Bizspark MSDN does provide startup organizations with multiple user accounts all for internal use and testing. It is not for production or internal use. Yeah. It's not for me. I was just musing about the test VMs and such we need to spin up as IT, and I was curious how larger businesses or businesses with test labs license those test Windows VMs. I figured MSDN platforms wasn't used because of [see the above responses], but perhaps truth was going to be stranger than fiction. Larger is different. Once you are of any size you have enterprise agreements and your labs are just covered.

@scottalanmiller said in Arg! XenApp!: @dbeato said in Arg! XenApp!: @scottalanmiller said in Arg! XenApp!: @dbeato said in Arg! XenApp!: @scottalanmiller said in Arg! XenApp!: @dbeato said in Arg! XenApp!: @travisdh1 said in Arg! XenApp!: @dbeato said in Arg! XenApp!: See below: https://www.parallels.com/blogs/ras/what-is-ica-citrix/ So, basically, it's expensive RDP with the same latency issues. Why companies, why? Guess it's another "I'll tell you it's a bad idea and then you'll pay me for all the extra time it's going to take" situations. That assumes they can find anyone who will touch it. Yes, you can do the same with VDI and remote apps. Well, ICA is one way to do VDI and remote apps, lol. I meant native VDI https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remote-desktop-services/rds-supported-config What does Native VDI mean? VDI only refers to something being virtualized. RDS is as much native VDI as any other remoting technology. VDI is just one to one usage, instead of many to one. VDI predates any modern VDI associated technologies. Okay, in my case not involving additional software or application to set it up that is not Microsoft. RDS is all Microsoft. But MS and VDI have no tie together. You can do VDI with nothing but KVM and Linux guests. I get it... trying to place a standard into a box, ny bad.

@dashrender said in Office + RDS + Citrix + Licensing = Confused: @hobbit666 said in Office + RDS + Citrix + Licensing = Confused: @dashrender said in Office + RDS + Citrix + Licensing = Confused: Interesting, on the website, the included apps are the same. They include the same apps but some of the rights are different:- RDS isn't virtualization though - at least I don't think it is. @scottalanmiller ?? This is how Microsoft describe it in this context, including which plans it's available on:

@scottalanmiller said in ESXi and Xen Orchestra - Licensing models that are eerily similar: @brrabill just people who like beating horses. Well that's just cruel.

So it's finally happening? I remember hearing they were going to be changing the license to allow for this sort of thing. All I can say is, that's a lot of licensing money you've been prohibiting.

@stacksofplates said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think: @dashrender said in Why Free Open Source Software Is Cheaper Than You Think: Well I have downloaded Inkscape but haven't had occasion to use it much. If you have other graphics programs to recommend I'm all ears. Personally I really like the Corel products, they seem much more straight forward to use than PS. So I'm definitely not stuck on the PS side of things. I'm definitely a causal user I prefer Inkscape if I can do it. Vector is so much easier to work with than raster. Inkscape is awesome. Loads of professional work is done in that.