Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment
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@storageninja said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
Oh yes, that's the big thing, but within the context of moving things around, you don't get much. I'm a big believer in SA just being a cost of Windows. If you run Windows Server you need SA and/or you need to pay out of pocket for each upgrade. It's part of the base cost of maintaining a Windows infrastructure.
Also if you have 300 users and use Windows at any scale, you need an EA.
A big benefit to EA/ELA's with vendors is it just simplifies the procurement discussion to a single agreement that should last you 3 years. This makes it easy for your staff to just deploy stuff rather than go through bid/procurement everytime they need to deploy something.Is 300 really enough for an EA? I'm really asking, not trying to sound incredulous. That's so small that often you are still in the "two server" range. At that size, you could be looking at EA basically for anyone, why even have anything but EA?
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Being that the 90-day limit also applies to DC, and you had 2 DC licences per host, would you still get stuck with not legally being allowed to move the same VM more than twice per 90-day period?
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@wrx7m said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
Being that the 90-day limit also applies to DC, and you had 2 DC licences per host, would you still get stuck with not legally being allowed to move the same VM more than twice per 90-day period?
Not sure what you mean. You only ever have one on any given host. DC is a "one per host" product because it's unlimited use. Adding more licenses to a host would not get you anything.
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@wrx7m said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
Being that the 90-day limit also applies to DC, and you had 2 DC licences per host, would you still get stuck with not legally being allowed to move the same VM more than twice per 90-day period?
You need one DC license for HOST1 and one DC license for HOST2. Then you are free to move VMs between the two as often as you like... If we're talking about DC. The same applies to Standard, you just need to have the same licensing on both hosts to cover the VMs that will be moving to the other host.
Edit : and if you are going that route, you may as well have a cluster set up with SW vSAN
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So with 2016 core licensing for an SMB with/without SA in say a two host cluster for <100, it seems that it is best to go back to multi-function servers to save on OS licensing. Is my thinking wrong here?
I do like single function guests but it could become much cheaper if a business combines on-prem Email, FileServices, DC, RDS, SW, SAP, or any combination of other applications into 2 or 3 VM's.
My logic could be faulty but with the limits on use of MS products, it just seems way more expensive than it needs to be. Don't get me wrong, I do understand value and if a company goes down the MS route, there is a price to pay and the rules must be followed.
Of course the real answer to the perceived high cost of MS, is to move as many services off of Windows as possible.
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@pmoncho said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
So with 2016 core licensing for an SMB with/without SA in say a two host cluster for <100, it seems that it is best to go back to multi-function servers to save on OS licensing. Is my thinking wrong here?
I do like single function guests but it could become much cheaper if a business combines on-prem Email, FileServices, DC, RDS, SW, SAP, or any combination of other applications into 2 or 3 VM's.
My logic could be faulty but with the limits on use of MS products, it just seems way more expensive than it needs to be. Don't get me wrong, I do understand value and if a company goes down the MS route, there is a price to pay and the rules must be followed.
Of course the real answer to the perceived high cost of MS, is to move as many services off of Windows as possible.
Once you get to a certain number of servers/functions the datacenter license becomes viable/less expensive (I think the break even point is 13 servers). With the Datacenter license you can virtualize as many guests on the hardware as you want/will fit.
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That I get but does it make sense to get DC to stick with single function hosts? Does an SMB really want to pay for a WSUS, Email, two DC's, FileServer and two/three RDS servers separately?
If an SMB can combine functions from 14 VM's(random # ) down to 4 VM's, why pay the extra 3 OS licenses for each host in the cluster?
I guess it comes down to the usual price vs risk equation?
Just trying to wrap my head around all this.
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@pmoncho said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
That I get but does it make sense to get DC to stick with single function hosts? Does an SMB really want to pay for a WSUS, Email, two DC's, FileServer and two/three RDS servers separately?
All my SMBs do. The protection is important and once you have any number, DC makes the separation "free".
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@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@pmoncho said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
That I get but does it make sense to get DC to stick with single function hosts? Does an SMB really want to pay for a WSUS, Email, two DC's, FileServer and two/three RDS servers separately?
All my SMBs do. The protection is important and once you have any number, DC makes the separation "free".
We do here too but with the refresh coming up next year, I am debating on whether the value for us is actually there vs moving as much to linux as possible. I have a little while to figure it out but this thread has been very enlightening. Good stuff.
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@pmoncho said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@pmoncho said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
That I get but does it make sense to get DC to stick with single function hosts? Does an SMB really want to pay for a WSUS, Email, two DC's, FileServer and two/three RDS servers separately?
All my SMBs do. The protection is important and once you have any number, DC makes the separation "free".
We do here too but with the refresh coming up next year, I am debating on whether the value for us is actually there vs moving as much to linux as possible. I have a little while to figure it out but this thread has been very enlightening. Good stuff.
If it's possible (in a given scenario, all things considered) to replace a windows server with Linux, it's always valuable. Even on a DC host. There's always savings in some form.
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@obsolesce Yeah. Somewhere I saw the 90 day limit applied to DC. I guess if you have DC on both, it doesn't matter.
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My God reading things like this confuse me more lmao.
But am I right in summarizing this way:-
If I have a single VM that's "critical" and need to move/migrate it due to issues if all my hosts are licensed with DC with the correct core count and SA.
I can move that VM as often as I want? I.e every day(Or applied to unlimited number of VMs due to DC)
What if I had all hosts licensed with DC but no SA would I then be limited to the 90day limit?
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@scottalanmiller said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@pmoncho said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
That I get but does it make sense to get DC to stick with single function hosts? Does an SMB really want to pay for a WSUS, Email, two DC's, FileServer and two/three RDS servers separately?
All my SMBs do. The protection is important and once you have any number, DC makes the separation "free".
We do. It was a matter of how many we needed then, and adding as we went. Now two DC licenses would be worth it, but we couldn't predict it that far in advance 7+ years ago.
Edit: We have Windows Server Standard with SA
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@hobbit666 said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
My God reading things like this confuse me more lmao.
But am I right in summarizing this way:-
If I have a single VM that's "critical" and need to move/migrate it due to issues if all my hosts are licensed with DC with the correct core count and SA.
I can move that VM as often as I want? I.e every day(Or applied to unlimited number of VMs due to DC)
What if I had all hosts licensed with DC but no SA would I then be limited to the 90day limit?
@StorageNinja can correct me if I am wrong, but if all hosts have DC, there is no limit because there is no limit to the licensing on each host in the first place.
It is only with Standard that you have the 90 day license portability thing. From one host with Standard to another host.
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@wrx7m said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@obsolesce Yeah. Somewhere I saw the 90 day limit applied to DC. I guess if you have DC on both, it doesn't matter.
There are no restrictions with Linux VMs. You can transfer those back and forth from Hyper-V host to host all day along, no licensing anywhere required (so long as the Linux VMs aren't running any software with such restrictions).
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@obsolesce said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@wrx7m said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
@obsolesce Yeah. Somewhere I saw the 90 day limit applied to DC. I guess if you have DC on both, it doesn't matter.
There are no restrictions with Linux VMs. You can transfer those back and forth from Hyper-V host to host all day along, no licensing anywhere required (so long as the Linux VMs aren't running any software with such restrictions).
Right. I understand that it is only a Windows-related VM licensing issue.
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@obsolesce said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
so long as the Linux VMs aren't running any software with such restrictions
MSSQL on Linux would need SA?
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Off topic, soz.
What is a use case for running MSSQL on linux rather than MySQL? Saving 500 dollars on a Windows Server license? Certainly there must be features in MSSQL that are missing in MySQL(and vice versa), but they must be some esoteric things that likely only work with other MS products like Dynamics or Sharepoint. With licensing costs of those products in the tens of thousands for even small deployments, why? -
@momurda said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
Off topic, soz.
What is a use case for running MSSQL on linux rather than MySQL? Saving 500 dollars on a Windows Server license? Certainly there must be features in MSSQL that are missing in MySQL(and vice versa), but they must be some esoteric things that likely only work with other MS products like Dynamics or Sharepoint. With licensing costs of those products in the tens of thousands for even small deployments, why?This is where it gets a little sticky for me. That Windows server license is no longer $500. If a company has 3 hosts in a cluster with 30 cores (10 on each host), that one server license with SA could cost 1000's. All depends on how they are licensed.
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@momurda said in Trying to correctly understand core licensing in a vmware environment:
Off topic, soz.
What is a use case for running MSSQL on linux rather than MySQL? Saving 500 dollars on a Windows Server license? Certainly there must be features in MSSQL that are missing in MySQL(and vice versa), but they must be some esoteric things that likely only work with other MS products like Dynamics or Sharepoint. With licensing costs of those products in the tens of thousands for even small deployments, why?For example, we use ResourceMate for our school library and by default, it uses MSSQL Express. Now I can just setup MSSQL Express on Linux instead of using Windows.
