Clarification - MS OVS Licensing

stoofa

stoofa

stoofa

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OK, I thought I was pretty well versed in MS Licensing - the mine field that it is.
Fundamental question with regards OVS licensing.

You have an organisation with 100 desktops.

50 Of these machines run Windows 7
25 Of these machines run Debian Linux with a Windows 7 VM
25 of these machines run Debian Linux with no Windows VM at all.

Under the OVS agreement I would have to buy licneses for 100 machines.

Is this correct?

Thanks.
 
From what I'm told - and this is where I was looking for clarification.
Under an OVS agreement you must license all machines on site - even those not running MS software.
Now I initially thought this was crazy - but two software companies have now told me this is the case.

Just wondered if anyone else here is under an OVS agreement and if they have to license ALL machines, no matter what OS/Software they are running.
 
Oh I see. Never heard that mentioned anywhere when I was looking into getting a client volume licensed. Then again it was a while ago so it may have changed or I just don't remember it.

I suppose if two software companies are saying the same it must be true. I doubt they would lie and what are the odds they are both mistaken?
 
Oh I fully agree. :)
It's just a third company, who we haven't dealt with before have popped up and said no, that isn't the case.
Only machines running Windows (native or virtual) are requried to be covered by the OVS agreement.
 
Apparently you need to licence all machines as per what the first two resellers have said.

Customers must standardize desktop platform products on all desktop PCs across their organizations and must order licenses for all qualified devices that can run any of the chosen desktop platform products. The only devices that customers need not order licenses for are PCs that are used as servers, devices that contain an embedded operating system, such as thin clients and Pocket PCs, and devices that are used only for line-of-business applications, like a hotel management system.
Click to expand...
 
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Would that not depend on why they need 25 Linux machines? If they need Linux to run a particular application to conduct business, would that not be considered a line-of-business application?
 
I found another link which more or less agreed with Burnsy - however also added "Machines that run no items from your OVS package".
But that was very wooley.

We're trying to find the best way to license our equipment.

We've got in the region of 200 machines in use.
However a fair percentage of those are running Debian only.
Sure we use MS Exchange and they would also have the need to connect to a Windows server - so require CAL's but nothing else.

We're currently under an OVS subscription - good pricing per machine, but we are aware we're paying for some machines that don't run a single piece of Microsoft software.

So we're trying to see if another licensing scheme whereby we only license the softwaree we're using rather than "every machine" will work out cheaper overall.
I was hoping we could "OVS" all of the machines that run Windows either natively or virtually.
Then just buy CAL's for the pure Debian machines.
Doesn't look like I can do it that way under OVS.
 
Not necessarily.
Software Assurance is a must as we do like to keep wrokstations to to date.
Maybe we should just be looking at standard Volume Licensing?

The only thing is, under the OVS you get:

OS Upgrade
Office
Server CAL
Exchange CAL

As a bundle, per workstation at a really good price.
 
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