@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.

@dashrender said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@jaredbusch said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@msff-amman-itofficer said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@jaredbusch said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@msff-amman-itofficer said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@jaredbusch said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@msff-amman-itofficer said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@tim_g

@tim_g said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

@msff-amman-itofficer said in How Many Windows Server VMs Can You Run on Hyper-V SAMIT Video:

Oh and they provide the hyper v integration as cab file (guest agent):
windows6.x-hypervintegrationservices-x64.cab
I cant belive I complained when VIRT IO Tools was repackaged some time ago and they changed some folders in there ISO image, while MS gives you a .cab file and not even an executable.

What do you mean? What VM are you trying to install? You shouldn't need any integration tools at all for any modern operating system on a VM. They come built in and are updated via Windows Update (if running Windows OS)

If you install RHEL or CentOS, you can download a Linux Integration Services .ISO if you need to. You simply run the ./install.sh file. All other modern Linux OSs already have the Hyper-V Integration built in to the kernel.

This is what i am talking about:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-US/help/3063109/hyper-v-integration-components-update-for-windows-virtual-machines

Method 2: Microsoft Download Center

The following files are available for download from the Microsoft Download Center.

Operating system Update
All supported x86-based versions of Windows 8.1 Download Download the package now.
All supported x64-based versions of Windows 8.1 Download Download the package now.
All supported x64-based versions of Windows Server 2012 R2 Download Download the package now.
All supported x64-based versions of Windows Server 2012 Download Download the package now.
All supported x86-based versions of Windows 7 Download Download the package now.
All supported x64-based versions of Windows 7 Download Download the package now.
All supported x64-based versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 Download Download the package now.

Go to the download, and it is all .cab files.

WTF are you talking about. This is not DVD media. You are doing it wrong from the beginning.

Ofcourse I know this is not DVD media, those are the Hyper-V agents that MS wants you to install on your guest machine, MS calls them Hyper-V integration components.

ESXi and KVM Virt IO all provides much better ways to get this installed on your guest machines, and dont provide you a dumb .cab file.

Just because you are not capable of providing a share to get access the files from within the VM does not mean the process is stupid.

Who wants to mount ISO files from the hypervisor all the time just to update software in a guest VM? That is the stupid thing.

Okay, granted what are the commands to create share in Windows hyper-V standalone? I tried and failed, or the only way to do so is to have share outside hyper-V like NAS ? if so both KVM and ESXi can be easier in sending files directly to the host.

I dont want to go to fight about who is the best Virtualization platform cause that is pointless, but my trial wit Hyper-V is everything required 2 extra steps to get it configured. While the competition it can be done with one step.

Why are you trying to put these files on the hypervisor? They have no need to be on the hypervisor. You cannot download them there anyway why are you trying to put them there? The guest VM does not care where they are shared from. Just put them someplace accessible. or even download them directly in the guest VM.

I am not arguing best hypervisor platform. I am simply stating you are doing things wrong and causing your own problems.

I'm guessing that he might be saying that he has no NAS, and doesn't want to create a share from his desktop machine to make those ISOs available to the hypervisor.

ESXi allows you to have a folder on the DataStore that you can then reference. I did this for my ESXi server. Same goes for my XS, I had a local piece of storage on the hypervisor for ISOs.

I don't see an actual issue with this. The biggest one I seem is that you might be using more expensive disk to store ISOs instead of storing them on a NAS.

And Hyper-V lets you access share a folder too. It is all windows, so the admin share is there and active.

\\hypervservername\c$\somefolder

@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server for your home lab:

The more often you are forced to rebuild, the more you will be encouraged to automate.

Can you sysprep before adding the trial license? That way you could just clone and add the license automatically.

@Breffni-Potter has been a pain with centos on dl160. It is now with dl380 and hyperv

This turned into an awesome discussion. I need to bookmark this one, some dynamite licensing info here.

@Dashrender said in Windows Server 2012 R2 Licensing:

@JaredBusch said in Windows Server 2012 R2 Licensing:

@Dashrender said in Windows Server 2012 R2 Licensing:

@JaredBusch said in Windows Server 2012 R2 Licensing:

Server 2016 have a install method called Core.

Actually it doesn't. The install options are

standard standard with desktop experience datacenter datacenter with desktop experience

The ones without desktop experience are what used to be called Core installs. I think MS does have the term Core still sprinkled around inside the OS and documentation though.. just adding more to the confusion.

They changed again? I have not installed 2016 yet.

Yep. And this time I actually agree. The whole idea, I think, being that MS is moving toward a non GUI on the servers being the standard way of installing/using Windows Server going forward.

They made that very public as their goal when PowerShell was released long ago.

@JaredBusch said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:

@scottalanmiller said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:

@travisdh1 said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:

@jt1001001 said in Windows Server 2016 Pricing:

Didn't VmWare try licensing by RAM not too terribly long ago?

I don't think they licensing by RAM so much as limit the amount of RAM you're allowed to use according to license type. The free tier was really quite limited, is it still 128GB?

That's kind of the same thing :)

That is also not very limited at all. Most SMB do not have that much in their servers. If they have more, they bought too much.

Same for cores. Most SMBs that have more than sixteen per server bought too much, often way too much. Especially if they are Intel cores.

Scott, how does this work for non static profiles?

The XX concurent users only comes into play if the licensed application offers such a thing. In the case of something like Office 2013, you'd definitely need 300 license...

But for Something like... Raiser's Edge, or a Student Information System... You'd only need to license for the expected number of concurrent users.

IE: Raiser's Edge can be installed on every computer on my campus... But only 15 of us can log in at one time.

@Carnival-Boy said in ESXi Evaluation Period:

I have recently downgraded from ESXi Essentials to ESXi Free simply by entering a different key. It's the same product.

I'd say you moved between products. It's one product family, they are super similar, but are they the same product? Just semantics, but they are very different.

XO Community and XOA are not the same product. But it's the same code.

@JaredBusch said:

@Dashrender said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

Correct. OEM lives and dies on the machine it was first installed on. It's not transferable. I think what Jared was saying is that it doesn't matter whether it activates or not - that's irrelevant as to whether it is legal or not. Just because it activates doesn't mean it is legal.

Exactly.

More specifically - MS doesn't specifically go out of its way to deactivate. If it deactivation happens, it happens, if not - that's fine too. But licensing has mostly always been on the honor system.

All correct, but specifically, I meant that he can just P2V the server on to the new hardware and simply buy another OEM license from eBay or whatever and still be legal. Assuming, of course, that the eBay seller was legit and the license they sold was legal in the first place.

Hey - what do you know.. we're on the same page - (using most happiest tone possible - really I am)

@wirestyle22 said:

Do you think this inclusion is worth a legal battle should one ensue?

Hard to say, it's a marketing ploy. How much it convinces people based on the Cult of ZFS thing, is unknown. ZFS has a quite religious following, no real technical reason to exist on Linux, so Canonical's play here is to attract that crowd. Whether it is worth it or not, hard to say.

@IRJ yes.

You could purchase an OEM and do the same. It's called imaging rights and it's included with your VL license.

I use it to deploy Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 to my workstations.

OEM windows licenses come with all of my PCs. I bought 1 (really I bought 5) Windows Pro licenses with SA. this grants me the right to create deployable images of the same version of Windows as the OEM license grants me.

Yup, that's what I saw... no information at all :)

I've worked with multiple companies that had the opposite issue, all of their equipment control software ran on Solaris on Sparc only. So they had to maintain proprietary hardware and Solaris for everything.

@Dashrender Yes, then provide proof of windows OEM licenses (5 invoices from dell is all they required) They wanted a count of all devices (phones, tablets, MFPs, laptops, pcs) Then they asked what software I had installed and compared what I had to what they showed. They were missing about 6 open-business agreements I had so I had to find proof of purchase on those.

@scottalanmiller said:

But there are really convenient options. It's not like those don't exist and aren't used all of the time. It's just that you need to license them. But you CAN do recovery very easily.

The real issue is using Windows systems without being able to or willing to afford the cost to do so. Windows has a cost, which we all accept, to a point. The issues arise when we (or companies) don't want to spend enough to do it "right." Then it feels like there is a limitation with the product, but really it is just a lack of willingness to pay for what it cost to run it. But Windows is always a choice, as are the features like this kind of recovery.

I fully understand this now.

I understand that I can do EXACTLY what I want, which IMO makes for a much safe/better/quicker backup and recovery. As long as I buy another license. Or, in the case of larger companies, am already properly licensed.

My take has always been that making it more difficult to backup and restore is not in the interest of anyone. Even though Microsoft could theoretically make more money,
a -- they probably aren't because most people just run the backups anyway without proper licensing (most probably unaware)
b -- they will push people to other systems when backups fail or they realize the "cost of Windows" as you say

Datto, StorageCraft, etc ... these companies have great products that take great backups, and easily let you know if they are working. We're not talking about running systems here. We are talking about EASILY checking to see if backups have worked. That's it. Yes, it's possible to do another way, but again, that adds complexity and downtime. Yes, there is a cost to those things, but considering how important backup and recovery is, I think it should be allowed.

Going to have a play once the VL has been added.

Here is an example:

Three hosts, each running two Windows Server VMs, each with two sockets. Say Dell Power Edge R610 or HP Proliant DL360 nodes. Windows Standard Licensing.

Cost per license: ~$700

To license each node to run its normal load is $700 for a total of $2,100.

If we want to address the ability of any node to be a failover for the others or for non-disruptive maintenance, we need an additional license per machine. So we suddenly jump from $700 per node to $1,400 per node and the whole cluster jumps to $4,200 while gaining nothing during normal production times.

Now that only addresses single node failover. If we want to maintain the ability to do failover during times of maintenance we need yet another license for each machine! That means $2,100 per machine and $6,300 for the cluster.

Suddenly $350 per virtual machine in licensing has exploded to $1,050. A non-trivial increase.

Now we can choose which level and which features we want, but typically the value of an inverted pyramid is sold based on this top level of flexibility. If we are dealing with Data Center licensing this is more obvious and far less complex, but SMBs would rarely pay for that level of workload and may not think through the additional costs that this style of architecture potentially bring to the table.

@DustinB3403 said:

OK Chris Up Vote this if it's right. :-)

If the user of the Windows VM is at the hardware device that is running the VM. Generally a type 2 hypervisor, such as VirtualBox, a retail key is acceptable. but so is SA and VDA.

If the users are remotely accessing the VM, then SA or VDA are required. (one or the other)

There are *caveats to this statement. But generally correct.
*You can license Windows VDA for a device to run the VM locally, but only if that device has a Windows 7 Pro version or better. Otherwise, yes you can use a full retail license of Windows to run locally on the device OR Windows SA.

@Jason said:

@scottalanmiller said:

Not crazy that it is not enforced. Lots of licensing depends on trust.

I meant crazy that a CCIE guy at a reseller would say that on record.

It's crazy that he gave that advice on record. Or at all.

@Dashrender said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender said:

I can see doing RAID 6 if you can afford the performance penalty.

Which you would assume that you can if you can wait for a distant node to write as well.

By distant, you mean local, as in the same rack?

Yes, distant meaning outside of the chassis connected over a slow Ethernet link.

OK that's just weird!

There was a contact us email address in VLSC. I wrote them, included my license key and business information. They wrote back today indicating that they would create my key and I would receive it in a separate email. Additionally it would be added to my VLSC account.

I actually received the email with the KMS key before this email, and sure enough, the KMS key is now in my VLSC account.

How did they end up with a limitation like that? That seems crazy.

Exactly dashrender. the original OS that came with it was Windows 8.1. Single Language. I upgraded to Pro pack for the domain and have that key but it won't accept it as need the original OS first.

@GregoryHall said:

This write up is what I point people to when they have these questions (*the one my MS rep from SW said is gospel)
http://www.microsoft.com/OEM/en/licensing/sblicensing/Pages/downgrade_rights.aspx#fbid=D7zcRxMWVLN

Yeah but that says nothing about this specific case in regards to VOSE rights.