Office VL Cals for an RDS Servet

[theboyrob]

I'm wanting to get some Office 2013 Volume Licences to install on my Windows Server 2012 running as an RDS server.

We have around 5 people who remotely connect, but Office is only ever going to be used by one person at a time.

How many licences do I need to be looking at?

 

[#Chri5#]

Short answer : five.

Long answer : it depends!

Under VL licensing if the device accessing Office on the RDS Server is already licensed for the same edition, language and version of Office, the device can access Office on the RDS without needing an extra license. Given that only VL for Office can be installed in RDS, that means Standard or Pro Plus on the "base" device.

 

[theboyrob]

So in theory:

If i install 1 Volume License on the RDS server (just to get Office installed on there) for Office 2013 Standard and I have 5 machines connecting to the RDS to use Office 2013, as long as 4 of the machines have an Office 2013 Standard license associated with them everything would be ok?

One machine would use the RDS Office 2013 VL License
The other 4 machines would connect exactly the same but would be covered be their own Office 2013 License?

Thanks again in advance!

 

[Caged]

I assume you know you'd need RDS CALs as well?

 

[theboyrob]

I assume you know you'd need RDS CALs as well which are done on a per-user basis?

Yes thank you we have 10 of these already.

 

[Caged]

I corrected the above after you quoted, you can do per-device RDS licensing but it seems like in your scenario per-user is more cost effective.

 

[#Chri5#]

So in theory:

If i install 1 Volume License on the RDS server (just to get Office installed on there) for Office 2013 Standard and I have 5 machines connecting to the RDS to use Office 2013, as long as 4 of the machines have an Office 2013 Standard license associated with them everything would be ok?

One machine would use the RDS Office 2013 VL License
The other 4 machines would connect exactly the same but would be covered be their own Office 2013 License?

Thanks again in advance!

If the 5 laptops have Office 2013 Standard (VL) already, you should be good to go. I've been wading through a couple of MS PDFs on Office licensing recently and this is one of them.

Scenario 5: Laptops as Qualified Desktops
An Enterprise Agreement customer has 20 portable desktops (e.g., laptop computers) that already have Microsoft Office licensed and installed on them.

Under an Enterprise Agreement all devices should be counted as qualified desktops and separately licensed for Enterprise products (e.g. Office), including those 20 portable devices. The users of these 20 portable desktops occasionally connect to a server running Windows Server Remote Desktop Services to access Microsoft Office remotely while they are using a dial-up or broadband connection. As long the 20 portable desktops are licensed for the same edition, language, and version of Microsoft Office being remotely accessed, that use is covered under the licenses assigned to those 20 portable desktops. For both the licensed desktop and the separately licensed portable desktop, Microsoft Office may be used locally or accessed remotely using Remote Desktop Services or similar functionality.

There's also this scenario outlined if people connect from their own PCs:

Scenario 7: Remote Access from a Home Device
Company employees remotely access a corporate network from home, using desktops that they own. While connected, the employees use Remote Desktop Services to access Microsoft Office on a corporate-owned server.

A Microsoft Office license for the version of Microsoft Office running on the server is required for the home desktop in this scenario. The company can enable this scenario by purchasing Work At Home (WAH) Licenses for the employees’ home desktops. Customers with active Software Assurance can also acquire Home Use Program (HUP) licenses for their employees’ home desktops. In addition, customers with active Software Assurance can also use their Roaming Use Rights to remotely access Microsoft Office software from qualified 3rd party devices.

 

[theboyrob]

If the 5 laptops have Office 2013 Standard (VL) already, you should be good to go. I've been wading through a couple of MS PDFs on Office licensing recently and this is one of them.



There's also this scenario outlined if people connect from their own PCs:

We already have 10 licenses for Office 2013 Pro Plus, so if we bought a VL license to get it installed on the server all the machines that connect remotely (which already have an Office 2013 Pro Plus license installed) would be licensed to use it on the RDS Server?

Thanks for everyone's help, much appreciated!

 

[J1nxy]

We already have 10 licenses for Office 2013 Pro Plus, so if we bought a VL license to get it installed on the server all the machines that connect remotely (which already have an Office 2013 Pro Plus license installed) would be licensed to use it on the RDS Server?

Thanks for everyone's help, much appreciated!

Are these from your VL or EA if so you don't need to buy a license to get it installed. Also do you have SA on the licenses?