Virtualisation Licensing for WS2. WS2. 01. 2 R2. I am not answering any more questions on this post  to be honest, there have been too many for me to have the time to deal with them. Dont bother asking Ill ignoredelete it. My recommendations are Re read this post if you do not understand it after the first or second reads. To be honest, most of the questions have been from people who are just trying to make things complicated. Just license the hosts for the maximum number of Windows Server VMs that can ever run on that host, even for 1 second. It is that simpleAsk your LARdistributorreseller thats their job and thats why you pay them. This post follows my dissertation on Windows Server 2. RD-License-Servers-available.jpg' alt='Install Windows 2008 Cal Licenses Tv' title='Install Windows 2008 Cal Licenses Tv' />Edit The below is unchanged with WS2. R2. The only difference is that WS2. R2 Datacenter edition only includes Automatic Virtual Machine Activation. Im putting Hyper V aside for just a few minutes to talk about how you will license virtualisation of Windows Server 2. Sphere, Hyper V, Xen. Server, or whatever tickles your fancy. BTW, the counting here also applies to System Center 2. Core Infrastructure Suite CISEnrolment for Core Infrastructure ECI minimum of 2. Tip. To use cleanmgr to delete deprecated updates on Windows 2008 R2 Windows 7 SP1, install KB2852386. To run Disk Cleanup on Windows Server, you can use an easier. Please read this post s l o w l y and let it sink in. Then read it again. If you have been eating bowls full of VMware FUD then read it a third time slowly. FAQVOSE or virtual operating system environment is a licensing term for virtual machine VM. It is used when talking about licensing a VM for Windows Server. When you buy a license for virtualisation you legally buy and assign it to hardware, not to VMs. The virtualisation rights of Windows Server licenses the VMs on the licensed host for Windows Server. Install Windows 2008 Cal Licenses And InspectionsThere is no mobility with OEM. You can move a volume license and its virtualisation rights once every 9. If you want to use HA clustering, Live Migrationv. Motion, DRSDynamic OptimizationPRO, then you need sufficient virtualisation rights on each host to support the maximum number of VMs that is possible on that host, even for 1 second. You cannot split a license or its virtualisation rights across hosts. Virtualisation rights are 2 VOSEs for a host licensed by Windows Server 2. Standard and unlimited VOSEs for a host licensed for Windows Server 2. Datacenter. Virtualisation rights covers the host for the assigned edition of Windows Server 2. Configure_a_2012_RD_License_Server-22.gif' alt='Install Windows 2008 Cal Licenses And Permits' title='Install Windows 2008 Cal Licenses And Permits' />Windows Server. It does not include Windows 87Vista. You can assign more than 1 license to a host. In other words, you license a host for the maximum number of Windows Server VMs that it could host. Host, 1 CPU, 2 VMs. Here you want to run a single host that has 1 CPU. The host will run 2 Windows Server virtual machines. You will assign a single Windows Server 2. The license covers 2 CPUs there is only 1 and provides virtualisation rights for 2 virtual operating system environments VOSEs. In other words, you get rights to install Windows Server 2. Standard or previous versions in 2 VMs on this host. Host, 2 CPUs, 4 VMs. The Standard edition covers 2 VOSEs, but the customer wants 4 VMs running Windows Server Standard 2. R2.   A single copy of WS2. Standard will not suffice. VOSEs VMs with licensing. Install Windows 2008 Cal Licenses EtcHost, 2 CPUs, 1. VMs. There are two options do you go with the Standard or Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2. In previous versions of Windows, the licensing server could only track perdevice licenses. In Windows Server 2008, the TS Licensing Role Service is also capable of. RDS 2008, 2008R2, and 2012 will not allow connections from older RDP 5. To get around this add the following registry key to the RDS Session Host. Hi, thanks for this tutorial. The Standard edition covers 2 VOSEs, but the customer wants 1. VMs running Windows Server Standard 2. R2. A single copy of WS2. Standard will not suffice. VOSEs VMs with licensing. Based on USA Open NL pricing the licensing of these VMs will cost 8. The Datacenter edition of WS2. VOSEs and covers 2 CPUs in the host. This solution will require a single Windows Server 2. Datacenter license which will cost 4,8. Decision If you will not go over 1. VMs on this host then Windows Server 2. Net Time Client. Standard edition is the way to go. If you estimate that there is a good chance of the VM numbers growing then spend an extra 3. Windows Server 2. Datacenter with its unlimited VOSE rights. USA Open NL pricing. Once you reach 1. VOSEs on a 1 or 2 CPU host, you need to consider the Datacenter edition because it is cheaper once you hit 1. VOSEs. 1 Host, 4 CPUs, 4 VMs. Its an unusual configuration but a valid one for the demonstration. The WS2. StandardDatacenter SKUs cover 2 CPUs each. In this case there are 4 CPUs. This will require 2 copies of Windows Server 2. Standard, which also covers the 4 VMs. Lets pretend that 3. VMs will run on this host with 4 physical CPUs. Then we would assign 2 copies of Windows Server Datacenter on it. CPUs each 4 CPUs and unlimited VOSEs. That Host with 3. Logical Processors 1. CPUs with 1. 6 Cores with Hyperthreading. The maximum specification for Windows Server 2. Hyper V is 3. 20 logical processors in the host. That could be 1. Intel CPUs, each with 1. Hyperthreading enabled. We dont count cores or logical processors when we license. We count CPUs, sockets, or plain old processors pick the term you prefer. There are 1. CPUssocketsprocessors in this server. That requires 5 copies of either Windows Server 2. Standard or Datacenter, depending on the required number of VOSEs. Clusters. Lets move on to the clusters, where people usually get things wrong because they dont understand or dont want to understand the mobility rights. VOSEs licensed by OEM cannot move. VOSEs licensed by VL can move once every 9. The correct solution is to license each host for the maximum number of VOSEs that it can have for even one second. And when I say correct I mean legal. Software Asset Management professionals auditors are not stupid and the tricks I hear people proposing are neither original or unknown to these auditors. Reminder This applies even to you non Hyper V folks. Hosts, 1 CPU each, 4 VMs. Dont get fooled  This is not one host with 3 VMs and 1 host with 1 VM. This is 2 hosts, each of which can have up to 4 VMs. In the past we would have used Enterprise edition on each host. That has been replaced by Windows Server 2. Standard edition, that now has all the features and scalability of the Datacenter edition. Take each host and size it for 4 VOSEs. That means we need to assign 2 copies of Windows Server 2. Standard edition to each host. Thats 4 copies of WS2. Standard. 2 Hosts, 2 CPUs each, 1. VMs. 10 VMs with 2 hosts means that it is possible to have all 1. VMs on a single host. You have two options to license each host for up to 1. VOSEs. Firstly you could license each of the hosts with 5 copies of Windows Server 2. Standard.   That will give you 1. VOSEs.   This requires 1. Standard at a cost of 8,8. USA Open NL. Alternatively you could license each host with 1 copy of Windows Server 2. Datacenter, at a cost of 9,6. The extra 7. 98 will allow you to burst beyond 1. VOSEs to unlimited VOSEs. Switching to licensing hosts using the Datacenter edition means we dont have to count VOSEs and we have unrestricted mobility between hosts. Hosts, 2 CPUs each, 2. VMs. We have exceed the magic number of 1. Datacenter edition with its unlimited VOSEs per host. Each host has 2 CPUs, so each host requires 1 copy of Datacenter. There are 2 hosts so we require 2 copies of Windows Server 2. Datacenter. You could add more hosts to this cluster and each could have unlimited VMs. As long as the hosts have 1 or 2 CPUs each, each additional host requires only 1 copy of Windows Server 2. Datacenter to license it for unlimited installs of Windows Server for the VMs on that host.