Microsoft Licensing on Virtual platforms
I read an interesting blog post on Mike De Petrillo’s blog entitled Microsoft Lies to their customers again. The article details a discussion with a customer regarding licensing on virtual platforms such as ESX and Hyper-V.
Customer: I would love to use VMware but the cost savings in Windows licenses from Microsoft with Hyper-V makes it a deal I can’t pass up.
Me: What do you mean by that? Licenses cost you the same for Windows no matter what virtualization solution you’re using.
Customer: That’s not what my Microsoft rep told me. They said I could get unlimited virtual machines with Datacenter Edition of Windows only if I used Hyper-V.
Me: Ah. I see. You know, they’re lying to you, right?
Customer: No. They never lie to me. Where’s the proof.
Now I’ve done a lot of work with company reps from all sorts of companies in the past. The thing to remember is these guys are sales guys pure and simple, they are interested in getting your business for their company, bottom line. If you say “I need to consolidate my server pool and keep the cost down”, the Microsoft Rep is obviously going to tell you that Microsoft Hyper-V is going to be the best and cheapest way to achieve this. Fair enough that’s his opinion, but as an IT Professional it is your job to see through the smoke and mirrors and substantiate any claims made. I take everything I hear with a pinch of salt (even from VMware) and I will always try to validate any claim made, either through existing customer reference sites, product forums or blog sites.
I’m still reeling from the fact that Mike is seeing this across a number of customers, how hard can it be to do a little research. I did a very quick google search on “licensing for virtualization“ and the top result was the press release relating to Microsoft’s change of licensing to incorporate virtualisation. The second result was the Microsoft page that details licensing for specific products such as Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008.
Within that page is a link to the white paper I used to clarify the correct approach to be taken by my current employer. The first paragraph answers the question this guy in New York should have been asking, don’t you think?
The purpose of this white paper is to give an overview of Microsoft® licensing models for the server operating system and server applications under virtual environments. It can help you understand how to use Microsoft server products with virtualization technologies, such as Microsoft Hyper-V™ technology, Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2, or third-party virtualization solutions provided by VMWare and Parallels.
