Microsoft Licensing Primer
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What' the main advantage of inTune? Their AV? The fact that it's the mobile version of WSUS? now included OS upgrades?
Why would someone buy it?
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Very few people do. It's an odd duck of a product. Central, hosted management of AV, OS upgrades, it's really mostly around mobile workforces. If you have AD internal you would not likely go down the InTune path. Most of what it does is built into other things.
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Last thing on DESKTOPS...
OEM is tied to the machine you purchased it on/for. (Since you can also buy OEM licenses from places.) You cannot transfer the license, not can you restore a backup image from OEM Machine A to OEM Machine B.
What about VL, and FPP?
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@BRRABill said:
What about VL,
VL is tied to the license it upgrades. So you....
- Buy an HP dx5150 desktop.
- It has an OEM copy of Vista
- That OEM Vista is tied to that desktop
- You VL upgrade that Vista to Windows 8.1
- That VL is tied to that OEM license
- The transitive property means that the VL is now tied to that hardware by association.
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So in a way, VL is tied to a machine as well.
The only license you can transfer is FPP, right?
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@BRRABill said:
The only license you can transfer is FPP, right?
Correct. And it is priced to make that impractical in all but the rarest of circumstances.
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Someone else can correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the point of VL for desktops is you buy the single copy of the highest version you need to image all your systems to.
So if your office is half Windows 8.1 and half Windows 10. You will buy a VL of Windows 10.
Then you will make an image for Windows 10 for the OEM 10 boxes and an image for 8.1 for the OEM 8.1 boxes, because the 8.1 boxes are not licensed for 10. -
@JaredBusch said:
Someone else can correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the point of VL for desktops is you buy the single copy of the highest version you need to image all your systems to.
So if your office is half Windows 8.1 and half Windows 10. You will buy a VL of Windows 10.
Then you will make an image for Windows 10 for the OEM 10 boxes and an image for 8.1 for the OEM 8.1 boxes, because the 8.1 boxes are not licensed for 10.That's how I understand it to... Though to Scott's point... The single VL you purchase you technically have to assign to a single machine in your environment, but that doesn't effect the use of imagining rights you know have for every machine in your environment.
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@Dashrender said:
@JaredBusch said:
Someone else can correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the point of VL for desktops is you buy the single copy of the highest version you need to image all your systems to.
So if your office is half Windows 8.1 and half Windows 10. You will buy a VL of Windows 10.
Then you will make an image for Windows 10 for the OEM 10 boxes and an image for 8.1 for the OEM 8.1 boxes, because the 8.1 boxes are not licensed for 10.That's how I understand it to... Though to Scott's point... The single VL you purchase you technically have to assign to a single machine in your environment, but that doesn't effect the use of imagining rights you know have for every machine in your environment.
That all matches my understanding.
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Onto SERVERS!
SERVER licenses can be purchased in three ways: OEM, retail, and VL.
OEM server licenses have the same restrictions as desktop licenses in that they are tied to the machine.
QUESTION1: can you backup an OEM server and image it to another OEM server? -
@BRRABill said:
QUESTION1: can you backup an OEM server and image it to another OEM server?
No, there is truly no use case for buying an OEM license for server. Just act like it doesn't exist.
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Well it's an easy checkmark on the ordering page.
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So perhaps it would be easier for someone to present a Cliff Notes version of the server version of retail and VL. (And SA, too, since a lot of people seem to like it for servers.)
I can try, but I have a feeling I am going to get a lot wrong.
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@BRRABill said:
Well it's an easy checkmark on the ordering page.
That's why they do it. OEM is a great example of vendors not having your interest at heart.
Technically if you have extremely predictable workloads and are using DevOps tools and move everything using containers and... no nevermind, there really is no effective way to make OEM Server not completely crazy.
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@scottalanmiller I would just assume retail doesnt exist as well. I only consider VL licensing for servers.
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@BRRABill said:
So perhaps it would be easier for someone to present a Cliff Notes version of the server version of retail and VL. (And SA, too, since a lot of people seem to like it for servers.)
I can try, but I have a feeling I am going to get a lot wrong.
Basically retail only exists for customers who have not gotten big enough to get a VL license which, in theory, it basically no one.
Get servers through VL and only VL. You need CALs, that gets you into the VL range. So if you need a server, you need VL and it saves you money. So while I could come up with extremely fringe use cases for retail, it's really just academic.
In the real world, desktops are OEM and servers are VL.
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@brianlittlejohn said:
@scottalanmiller I would just assume retail doesnt exist as well. I only consider VL licensing for servers.
Yup. I'd actually put that way up in the thread. OEM for desktops, VL for servers and ignore all others. They are special cases at best.
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Retail and OEM for servers are really pointless. Just too expensive to justify.
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So VL is the only real way to go on the server front. Got it.
For desktops, there is only a VL UPGRADE license. For servers, there is a base license, correct? And also an upgrade license?
