SBS 2011 Vs 2k8 R2 + Exchange

DRZ · 9 Feb 2011 at 21:56

You can fail over once in the event of catastrophic system failure but you cannot fail back for 180 days unless you have bought Datacentre. Microsoft have a reasonably lengthy document available about exactly what you can and cannot do with their software in a virtual environment.

slylittlefox · 9 Feb 2011 at 22:28

DRZ said:
You can fail over once in the event of catastrophic system failure but you cannot fail back for 180 days unless you have bought Datacentre. Microsoft have a reasonably lengthy document available about exactly what you can and cannot do with their software in a virtual environment.

I must admit I've never heard of that! Nor have we ever been warned by our MS account manager about it.

matthab · 9 Feb 2011 at 23:40

DRZ said:
You can fail over once in the event of catastrophic system failure but you cannot fail back for 180 days unless you have bought Datacentre. Microsoft have a reasonably lengthy document available about exactly what you can and cannot do with their software in a virtual environment.

Never heard of that either. I thought If you bought the license and its a MAC/VLK you just reactivate.

Is off to Google...

DRZ · 10 Feb 2011 at 17:26

slylittlefox said:
I must admit I've never heard of that! Nor have we ever been warned by our MS account manager about it.

Get an account manager that understands what they are talking about then...

matthab said:
Never heard of that either. I thought If you bought the license and its a MAC/VLK you just reactivate.

Is off to Google...

This is 100% true fact!

From their guide on virtual licensing, available here:

http://download.microsoft.com/downl...oft_Server_Products_Virtual_Environments.docx

In general, you may reassign software licenses for server products, but not on a short-term basis (i.e., not within 90 days of the last assignment). However, they may be reassigned sooner if you retire the licensed server due to permanent hardware failure.

There is a more detailed document on this floating about but I can't find it at the moment, but basically if you bought 2008 Enterprise for Machine 1 and it failed, you could reassign it to Machine 2 providing it hadn't moved in the past 90 days and couldnt move it again for another 90 days unless Machine 2 also had a licence and you didn't at any point exceed the number of VMs licenced on that server.

That is without even considering the virtual usage rights of SBS, which I dont know much about but they are unlikely to be more flexible than the rest are they!

slylittlefox · 10 Feb 2011 at 17:53

DRZ said:
Get an account manager that understands what they are talking about then...

No

DRZ · 10 Feb 2011 at 19:23

slylittlefox said:
No

Must be providing you with some amazing corporate hospitality or ridiculous pricing support then!

kefkef · 10 Feb 2011 at 20:05

I'd heard about that too DRZ, one of the reasons i went with Datacentre, the main one being DC version gives you unlimited licence potential on each licenced physical server, all of a sudden the £2k outlay per box means after 5 VM's i've broken even and 10 VM's makes it £200 per server licence!

DRZ · 11 Feb 2011 at 10:28

kefkef said:
I'd heard about that too DRZ, one of the reasons i went with Datacentre, the main one being DC version gives you unlimited licence potential on each licenced physical server, all of a sudden the £2k outlay per box means after 5 VM's i've broken even and 10 VM's makes it £200 per server licence!

Yeah, it is a really excellent way to do things. It is a shame you can only licence Datacentre on servers with two or more processors or you could really take advantage of that in the small biz market like the OP.

The best part is that you can move workloads from one host to another without having to consider licencing at all - this is the key area where licence costs start to grow massively! Lets say you have 10 hosts, each with 10-12 VMs on. Each host is sized to cope with a bit more demand so that you can fail over some VMs to each host in the event one host dies - you need to have at least 2 VM's worth of license headroom on each host to be able to move them fluidly like that - potentially not an insignificant cost (especially when compared with Datacentre!)

I personally find it alarming that so many people don't understand licensing at all, there must be an enormous number of people out there thinking they are "fine" when in reality they are on shaky ground!!