3/31/2021 0 Comments How To License Vcenter
It is up to you to manage the VMs and licenses you have and ensure you remain compliant -- Microsoft does no additional checking, but you need to make sure youre following the license agreement so youre properly licensed if you are audited.I understand the licensing rights for Windows Server 2012R2 when it is used as the hypervisor.We have 2 servers both running Windows Server 2012R2 installed on physical hardware with a Windows Server 2012R2 VM, one running Exchange 2013 and the other server has the same setup only running SharePoint 2013.We would like to take the VMs with Exchange and SharePoint and move them to our (much beefier) ESXi server.
However we are unsure how the licensing works considering the Windows Server 2012R2 physical machines will no longer be the hypervisor. I was wondering if someone could shed some light on how we would license Windows Servers running on VMWare ESXi. Would we need a license of each install of Windows running on the VMWare server (2012R2 Datacenter), or would we need to have 1 licensed install of Datacenter and other installs of Datacenter, as long as they were virtual installs on the same physical hardware. In the near future, I would like to add vCenter so that I can combine and manage both servers from a single interface. I honestly dont know if that even is correct, VMWare has so many options I need to bone up on that as well. So in theory, I should be covered to install as many instances of Server 2012 as I need, as I have one license to cover each physical server. I would hope Microsoft would never come knocking on our door, but I just would like to know I am covered should that ever happen. Vcenter Plus One VCenterAs for the VMware licensing (when you get that far), with that setup your best bet will be to look at an Essentials license -- it gives you licenses for up to 3 2-processor hosts plus one vCenter. The base license is 500, or if you want more advanced features you can look into Essentials Plus. If you put 2012R2 on the hardware and use it just as a hypervisor, it doesnt count as an instance and you could have two 2012R2 VMs. The Windows license applies to the physical machine. The instances of Windows (useful installs of the OS doing something other than hypervisor) are determined by the terms of the license. You can move the license, I believe, every 45 days to a different physical host. If you are using Windows Server Standard as your host OS with the Hyper-V role and NOTHING ELSE, you can have 2 VMs and 2 processors. If you have 4 processors, you must buy 2 licences and can then run 4 OSEs. I thought I had found the answer, but I really wanted to make absolutely sure. How to the VMs activate How do they know they are basically piggybacking on the license on another VM. I dont remember the exact core count a single datacenter license covers. You enter your key (either volume or retail), and it gets validated by Microsoft so long as you have activations left for that particular key.
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