@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.

@coliver said in GNU AGPLv3 vs MIT licensing: @olivier said in GNU AGPLv3 vs MIT licensing: aGPLv3 if you think some "hosters" can use it without contributing (ie not actually run the code on your machine = no need to share your modification with GPLv2 for example). Guess which license made AWS adding stuff to Xen without sharing it? So, even if I'm selling software, I'm convinced aGPLv3 is more fair toward the community. /my2cents Xen is MIT licensed isn't it? Nope GPL2. Duh should have trusted the dev. Xen probably predates the MIT license!

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.

@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.