Microsoft licensing 2
In a previous post, I spoke about licensing Window Server in a virtualized environment. Today, I’ll be addressing Client Access License or CAL, especially revolving around web facing. By web facing, I mean any server that services requests from any machine not owned by the firm. The underlying Windows OS license is not impacted whether it is web facing or private. Windows Standard is Windows Standard. To connect to a Windows server however, the machine in question needs to be accounted for with the purchase of a CAL. Purchasing a single license of Windows 2008 Standard gets you 5 shiny core CALs, Enterprise gets 25 CALs. In the datacenter licensing model, no CALS are extended’ but as seen in the previous post, found here, the savings more than make up for a few missing CALs. One gotcha in Windows CALs is that they are OS specific. If your firm purchased Windows 2003 CALs, you would need to upgrade to Windows 2008 CALs to connect to a 2008 server.
What do you get with the Core CAL? Here is a quote lifted from the Microsoft website discussing the Core CAL. “The Microsoft Core CAL Suite encompasses four fundamental Microsoft server products that provide your people with identity management, directory services, enterprise communication (e-mail, calendar functions, and scheduling), collaborative workspaces, and asset management. ” The interesting part of that quote is you now get an enterprise communication, previously known as an Exchange CAL. You also get a SharePoint CAL, and a Systems Center Configuration Manager Cal: Previously SMS. Pretty good, for a MSRP of approximately $40 a CAL, you get access to the standard functionality found in a Microsoft based IT environment: Active Directory, file and Print, Exchange, SharePoint and SCCM.
There is also an Enterprise CAL suite. The Enterprise CAL gets everything found in the Core CAL, plus Office communicator standard and enterprise, Rights Management and System Center Operations Manager (SCOM, previously known as MOM), Exchange 2007 Enterprise and Forefront Security. The extra functionality will cost you slightly around $125 per machine. Microsoft recommends that if you are going to roll out two or more of the systems found in the Enterprise CAL, it’s in your best interest financially to purchase enterprise CALs. You don’t have to specifically run one or the other either. If you only have 20 users running Office communicator or SCOM, buy 20 Enterprise CALs and buy the remaining CALs as Core. In larger numbers , however, this could become a burden on management as you have to ensure that you carry enough Enterprise CALs. You can also buy CALs specifically for each of the products in the Enterprise CAL. Again, this might become a management nightmare when dealing with large numbers of clients.
Now on to web facing servers: if you know that only users from your firm using devices that are properly accounted for in the CAL count. Then you have nothing to worry about. However, if anyone connects to a web facing server using anything other than a device with a CAL, you might need to an additional CAL type. I say might because Microsoft recently added a limited use External Connector to their Windows 2008 Web Server SKU. Microsoft now allows for up to 50 concurrent connections to their Web server product. Now this only affects web servers, if you have a terminal Server or file, file and print or need more than 50 concurrent connections to a web site. You would need to purchase an additional product. Bring on the Windows Server 2008 External connector License: Big name, easy functionality. If machines are connecting to a server other than a 2008 Web Server OS and they are not accounted for in your CAL count; you need an external connector. Luckily, Microsoft doesn’t stick it to us that bad, and they actually dropped the price from the 2003 version. The external connector license now costs $2000 MSRP.
Another area, where Microsoft gets a little extra money for web facing servers is through SQL licensing. Again, if you know exactly how many machines are connecting to a SQL server, you can buy that number of SQL CALs. You can purchase a Server plus 5 CAL suite of SQL Standard for $1849 with an additional CAL cost of $162 per client device. Now if you can’t guarantee that you know exactly how many users are going to connect through to your SQL server, such as in a public facing web server, you would need to license you SQL server by processor. This allows an unlimited number of connections, but it is significantly higher; $6,000 per processor. If you have a four processor SQL server, it would cost you $24,000. OK, you thinking but I only have one device connecting to it; the web server. Ah, good thought but Microsoft has already blocked that play. They believe that the web server is not the client; it is only the middle man in the delivery chain. You need to license the individual client machine; IE Joe public sitting at his Vista laptop sitting his living room watching the latest episode of Heroes on DVR. Ahem, sorry moving on.
So hopefully that gives you a basic understanding of Client Access licensing. A post on Cluster licensing will follow.
Microsoft Windows 2008 pricing: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/pricing.aspx
Microsoft Core CAL: https://www.microsoft.com/calsuites/core.mspx
Microsoft Enterprise CAL: http://www.microsoft.com/calsuites/enterprise.mspx
Microsoft SQL Licensing: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2005/en/us/pricing.aspx
Microsoft licensing
We are beginning to go a usage audit to true-up our Microsoft licensing. For the most part, the licensing is straight forward. Use a product, get a license. Don’t use the product, don’t get a license. But where confusion creeps in is around items such as virtualization, Public web access, Clustering. In this blog I’ll discuss Microsoft licensing in the virtualization arena. I’ll write another entry on public web access and clustering within the next day.
Licensing in the virtualization arena:
You have three options for licensing the Windows Server operating system. The first is that you buy a license for each virtual machine based on whether it is running Windows 2003 Standard or Enterprise: Easy enough. Option two is a bit more tricky, according to the Microsoft licensing for Virtualization web page, you can run “…you to run up to four software instances at a time in virtual operating system environments (OSEs) on a server under a single server license.” The third option is to purchase a license of Windows 2003 Datacenter, which is licensed per socket, for each of your Physical Hypervisor Hosts. This allows you to run an unlimited number of Windows Server based guest VMs on that particular host.
Lets look at a quick cost benefit analysis of each licensing type. We will use a two node cluster of dual processor Quad core servers. We will exclude networking, storage, electrical and cooling consumption. Those would be similar under any of the three licensing options. I also won’t even begin to do a hardware cost comparison between physical and virtual as there is enough information on the web to make an accountant cry about how much you will save virtualizing your environment. We will use a Server vCPU to pCPU ratio of 5:1, which should give us roughly 40 vCPUs. Given that we need the overhead to allow a hardware failure, we will not account for the second Host node. We’ll break down the license usage as 34 Windows 2003 Standard and 6 Windows 2003 Enterprise Guests.
License option 1: (one license for each Guest VM)
| MSRP | Amount | Option 1 Cost | ||
| Std |
$1,000 |
34 |
$34,000 |
|
| Ent |
$4,000 |
6 |
$24,000 |
|
|
$58,000 |
||||
As you can see in the graphic above, the MSRP of those 40 servers would be approximately $58,000.
License option 2: (Windows Server Enterprise – 4 free on the same server)
| MSRP | Amount | Option 2 Cost | ||
| Ent |
$4,000 |
12 |
$48,000 |
|
Here is where it can a little dicey, the license states that you can run 4 instances of the OS on one server. When you license in the two node environment, especially when using a product such as VMware Infrastructure DRS; you can not be sure how many VMs will reside on one physical host at any one time. It might be 20-20 or it might be 22-18, etc.. While it would look like you only need 10 Enterprise licenses to cover those 40 servers, you would probably need at least 1 extra for each node to ensure that you never have more guest VMs running on one node. Even with purchasing two extra licenses of Windows Enterprise, you still save $6,000 over the one-license per guest option. Another benefit is that you can run either Standard or Enterprise and still be in the good graces of Microsoft.
License option 3: (Windows Server Datacenter – run what you brung!)
| MSRP | Amount | Option 3 Cost | ||
| DataCenter |
$3,000 |
4 |
$12,000 |
|
Here is where Microsoft licensing in the virtualized arena begins to shine. Microsoft DataCenter licensing has an MSRP of $2,999 per physical processor. Not per core, per physical socket. That means that for each node in the cluster, we need $6,000 worth of Microsoft OS, to cover everything. This licensing option also allows us the opportunity to load whatever OS, the business unit needs. Or, we just standardize on Windows Enterprise for the Virtualized servers and not worry about any features that are disabled on the standard version.
Microsoft Licensing for Virtualization: https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/highlights/virtualization.mspx
About mordtech
Experience:
I’m an IT professional with over ten years of Microsoft Server support. I’ve also supported Checkpoint and VMware. I’m currently employed by a large IT outsourcing corporation in the US.
I’ve implemented Windows Active Directory, Checkpoint VPN/Firewalls, VMware Infrastructure, Sharepoint/Project Server amongst others.
Personal:
I’m married and a father of two boys, which is by far the most trying job of my life: the boys, not the marriage. We reside in the midwest and aren’t looking forward to the fast approaching winter.
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