additional help with ms licensing...

atomiser

atomiser

atomiser

Associate
Joined
28 May 2003
Posts
1,852
hi there,

i have a customer who has got themselves into a bit of a state. their server (sbs2003) is in a right mess so we are re-installing that from scratch. the clients are in a mess too so were going to flatten all of them before joining them to the shiny new sbs2003 network.

they have all the disks for sbs2003 and there is a coa license key stuck on the server. so that side of things should be ok...i hope, the problem is that the disks etc were provided with a hp server, and their new server is going to be a dell...can we transfer the license across, or are we going to have to buy a new one with the new server?

the clients, however, are a different matter. they have a mix of custom built machines, asus barebones machines, acer 'off-the-shelf' machines, and a variety of laptops from multiple vendors. some have coa stickers, they have some media sets etc but it's not clear what belongs to what etc.

i'm going in to see them next week to do an inventory of what they have and what's missing...but what's the best course of action here? can we just buy oem copies of xp for any machines that either dont have a cd or a coa?

many thanks.
 
Basically you're in a right mess and it isn't going to be easy to sort out.
Workstations:

Look at each workstation and check for a COA for Win2k, WinXP or Vista.
If they have one attached then great - you have an OS license for that machine.
If it doesn't have a sticker attached then as per the OEM licensing (which says you must attach the sticker to the case) the machine has no OS license.
If you find there is a cupboard full of OEM OSs with their stickers still attached then distribute them around the workstations.
After this, any machine that doesn't have a COA attached is OS unlicensed - cheapest option would be to then buy an OEM license for each of those machines (unless we are talking 30+ machines, in which case it's time for licensing, however I'm guessing not as you're using SBS).

With regards office on each workstation it is the same again.
You need to find out just how many copies of Office were purchased and how many machines require it.
For each machine running Office without a license you need to purchase one - again depending on number then OEM Office maybe the best/cheapest way forward.

Server:
It sounds to me that a Hewlett Packard server was purchased with an OEM copy of SBS2003.
Unfortunately if this is the case then that OEM license is tied to that Hewlett Packard server and cannot be moved to any other machine (say to your Dell replacement).
If however your current SBS2003 license is a Full Retail one then yes - it can be moved from one machine to another.
Buy OEM SBS2003 again and you will hit the same problem in the future should you decide to change the server.
However a transferrable Retail license does cost a fair amount more.

CALs
Each machine that attaches to your SBS2003 server requires an SBS2003 CAL.
This CAL covers the Windows, Exchange, SQL, etc connections each machine is likely to make.
When the SBS2003 license was first published then a number of CALs would have been supplied with the product.
It is also possible that more CALs have been purchased since.
Basically each machine that will attach to the SBS2003 server will require an SBS2003 CAL.
Count up your workstations, count up the number of CALs you have and purchase additional CALs should you require them.
 
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