Microsoft Licensing Primer
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Looks like this got covered. Licensing is only needed for warm and hot spares, not cold ones.
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What about in my Datto example?
Every hour there are incremental backups made, and appended to the image. Once a day it boots it to be sure it is bootable, then kills the VM. Or, in the case of DR, I can boot the VM, and have it up and running on the network within minutes.
Wouldn't that be considered a cold boot DR server?
From the MS definition:
Backup for Disaster Recovery provides additional licenses for servers used as offline (“cold”) backups, to help you recover in case of a catastrophic event. Cold backups help users regain access to critical data and applications following disasters and help protect the mission-critical solutions of your organization. For each server license you have with Software Assurance, you have the right to install the same software product on a “cold” backup server for disaster recovery. -
@BRRABill said:
Every hour there are incremental backups made, and appended to the image. Once a day it boots it to be sure it is bootable, then kills the VM. Or, in the case of DR, I can boot the VM, and have it up and running on the network within minutes.
Clearly not cold. Cold means not running. If you run it, it is not cold during the time that you are running it. It's cold while not running it, of course, but the licensing issues hit you when you run it.
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@BRRABill said:
Wouldn't that be considered a cold boot DR server?
As long as you keep it cold and don't fire it up.
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@BRRABill said:
From the MS definition:
Backup for Disaster Recovery provides additional licenses for servers used as offline (“cold”) backups, to help you recover in case of a catastrophic event. Cold backups help users regain access to critical data and applications following disasters and help protect the mission-critical solutions of your organization. For each server license you have with Software Assurance, you have the right to install the same software product on a “cold” backup server for disaster recovery.Cold is offline. Your description of how you intend to use Datto is not cold or offline.
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I did a little further digging, and of course you are correct. I may have already mentioned this, but ML is now added to the short list (currently including only my wife) of people I just will in the future assume to always be right.
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The Software Assurance benefit around cold server backup for disaster recovery includes the ability to install the server software, to configure it, to test disaster recovery procedures periodically, for example several times a year, and of course to move the backup server into production mode in the event of an actual disaster.
Other than this limited group of actions, cold server backups should be turned off. If they are turned on and used in any active mode, such as backup of production data, they are considered “warm” backups and should be licensed separately as any production server. As noted previously, warm backups are not included in this Software Assurance benefit.
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But firing up to test is included in the SA benefits, that's good to know. So what the Datto does to see if a VM can fire up and sends a screenshot and immediately shuts down should be covered.
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@scottalanmiller said:
But firing up to test is included in the SA benefits, that's good to know. So what the Datto does to see if a VM can fire up and sends a screenshot and immediately shuts down should be covered.
I would disagree, as what I also posted in that post says:
"If they are turned on and used in any active mode, such as backup of production data, they are considered “warm” backups and should be licensed separately as any production server." -
But the SA says: "includes the ability to install the server software, to configure it, to test disaster recovery procedures periodically"
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@scottalanmiller said:
But firing up to test is included in the SA benefits, that's good to know. So what the Datto does to see if a VM can fire up and sends a screenshot and immediately shuts down should be covered.
Wow.. I agree with Scott here, It looks like as long as you have SA, you're covered for that that backup product does. Interesting.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
But firing up to test is included in the SA benefits, that's good to know. So what the Datto does to see if a VM can fire up and sends a screenshot and immediately shuts down should be covered.
I would disagree, as what I also posted in that post says:
"If they are turned on and used in any active mode, such as backup of production data, they are considered “warm” backups and should be licensed separately as any production server."In my opinion you're not violating the license because you aren't firing up the VM to perform the backup, instead you are firing it up to confirm the backup. It's a subtle but important difference.
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@Dashrender said:
Wow.. I agree with Scott here, It looks like as long as you have SA, you're covered for that that backup product does. Interesting.
Then how can you argue against:
"If they are turned on and used in any active mode, such as backup of production data, they are considered “warm” backups and should be licensed separately as any production server."Isn't the device backing up production data?
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@BRRABill said:
@Dashrender said:
Wow.. I agree with Scott here, It looks like as long as you have SA, you're covered for that that backup product does. Interesting.
Then how can you argue against:
"If they are turned on and used in any active mode, such as backup of production data, they are considered “warm” backups and should be licensed separately as any production server."Isn't the device backing up production data?
At the moment that they are on, they are warm. When you turn them off, they are cold. The Microsoft terms that you quoted clearly state that cold backups are allowed and that you are allowed to have them warm momentarily to test with an SA license.
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@BRRABill said:
Isn't the device backing up production data?
It's the warm vs. cold that we are discussing. That it is production isn't the concern here, we are assuming that it is all production.
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@BRRABill said:
@Dashrender said:
Wow.. I agree with Scott here, It looks like as long as you have SA, you're covered for that that backup product does. Interesting.
Then how can you argue against:
"If they are turned on and used in any active mode, such as backup of production data, they are considered “warm” backups and should be licensed separately as any production server."Isn't the device backing up production data?
You are not backing up while it's warm, you do the backup before you make it warm. Therefore you're clear.
What they want to avoid is you spinning up a machine, using that machine itself to do the backup, then turning it off.. that would against the license.
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I think they also set the "occasional" part of that to like a week or something.
Yet, if what you guys are saying is correct, then the Datto device should be OK if you have SA. Though I am not sure their daily screenshots would be OK.
@Chris can we get an official chime in on this?
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@BRRABill said:
I think they also set the "occasional" part of that to like a week or something.
No, a week would be completely out of the question. They mean that once in a while you turn on a backup VM to see that the backup was good. That would be for minutes not for days.
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@BRRABill said:
Yet, if what you guys are saying is correct, then the Datto device should be OK if you have SA. Though I am not sure their daily screenshots would be OK.
The Datto would be totally fine under SA. It is doing a momentary (literally just for a moment) and each one only once.
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I meant a week in how often you were able to turn it on.
I read this on a SA right explanation, not from MS though.
"The DR server must normally be turned off except for one week every 90 days for software self-testing and patch management and during disaster recovery." -
@BRRABill ah okay, once every 90 days then. I'm very surprised that it is only that often. We'd have to get some clarification on the usable snapshot process. What they are describing is a full scale "running from it" DR test which is quite a bit different than we are talking about here.
