Question about CALs and MS Licencing

dave-lew99 · 1 Dec 2009 at 18:10

Hi, i've got my head in a twist trying to work out MS CAL licencing, basically i'm angling to deploy SBS at work (mostly for Exchange) but i'm not sure how it works.

From my understanding every version of SBS comes with 5 CALs which you can chose to be either device or user CALs, we have 7 users we'd have to get a pack of 5 more.

Here's the confusion - if it is all device CALs we'd need probably 14 - most people have a laptop and a desktop at least, but if it's user based, can that user log in from two different places at the same time?

dave-lew99 · 1 Dec 2009 at 19:39

That was my understanding, whats unclear is what happens when the same user is logged into two or more machines at the same time - this is common in our office, most people have two machines which they use at the same time (for software and hardware development)

dave-lew99 · 1 Dec 2009 at 21:40

Yes, but the wording of that suggests the user is using one machine at a time - ie works in the office then goes home, not using two simultaneously, hence why i raised the question.

dave-lew99 · 1 Dec 2009 at 22:31

Cool, i know i could have asked MS but it's generally easier to get a quick straight answer just asking here. My server background is all Linux/Unix based so generally don't have all these licencing issues to worry about - just keep adding users and keep an eye on the performance!