Does a Dark DR Site Have to Be Licensed?

[AustinPowers]

Assume a production site with a SAN, 4 ESX 3.5 hosts, and a physical VC server. Assume a DR site with a duplicate SAN that is cloned daily, 2 ESX hosts, and a physical VC server. The servers at the DR site have ESX installed and configured, and VC is isntalled and configured. But otherwise the ESX and VC servers at the DR site are not powered on except for testing or in an actual emergency.

Does the DR site have to be licensed?

[weinstein5]

I would say no as long as it was only used for DR but final call would have to be from VMware -

[ejward]

I was a a presentation given by a 3rd party vendor a while ago. It was for replication software. The presenter asked if there was anyone from vmware in the room before he answered the same question. Vmware says you have to license everything. In reality, you really only have to have a license if you power on a VM at your DR site.

[epping]

Hi there, sorry to bring the bad news but licenses are required for the DR site, same cost no discount, if you dont have them you will be unlicensed.

[ejward]

that's kind of what I was getting at. You do need to be licensed however, it's not going to actually check your license server until you power on a VM. Maybe this is a moral question as opposed to a legal one. When we did our DR test, we use eval editions of everything. Unless you plan on running from your DR site for more than 30 days, I don't see why you couldn't have eval editions of everything in your DR site. You wouldn't be able to test it though.

[epping]

Hi

i see what u are getting at, however on option is legal and the other is not

[AustinPowers]

I can see where Vmware would want the extra revenue; but it seems that smaller sites would be discouraged from deploying fully functional DR locations if they have to pay for VMware licenses on servers that are only used in the event of an emergency. Does Microsoft take a similar stance on a dark Windows server at a hot site? I wouldn't think so.

[ejward]

No. With Microsoft, you can have servers powered off in a DR site free of charge. You can even power them on to patch them. If you're going to use one of the servers in DR as your primary server, the original one has to be off. If they are both on for any length of time, you have to pay for the second copy of Windows, This may be a feature of our Enterprise License Agreement with Microsoft, I'm not sure.

[epping]

I dont think you are comparing like for like, if you have a MS windows license it out of the box does nothing to ease your DR plans, if u use clustering sure u have to pay

virtualisation simplifies DR, VMware are fully aware of this and therefore charge. For small shops this extra cost may mean they can not have DR plans that utilise this technology ... if however MS decide to be competative this is one area that they may use i.e. price for DR

[AustinPowers]

I don't see how basic virtualization simplifies DR above a similar Windows deployment.

Scenario A:

I have a production site with a SAN and two physical Windows servers. DR site has duplicate hardware, Windows is installed and configured, then the servers are shut down. SAN is cloned daily. DR servers are powered up only if there's an emergency. Then Windows boots and accesses the data on the SAN. I'm back up & running & I only need two Windows licenses.

Scenario B:

I have a production site with a SAN and two physical ESX servers. DR site has duplicate hardware, ESX is isntalled and configured, then the servers are shut down. SAN is cloned daily. DR servers are powered up only if there's an emergency. Then ESX boots, VMs fire up and access data on the SAN. I'm back up and running, but I need four ESX licenses?

[habibalby]

Hi,

MS already started to use this techniques. Today we were having a Meeting with Microsoft Account Manager to discuss the Licensing for our Production Network, Development and DR Site under VMware Infrastructure.

Firstly, they said we are not supporting MS Products while it's running on ESX Servers. But they do while it's running on their unmatured Virtualization Server And if we have Premier Microsoft Support.

We had discussed about the Licenses for the Development Network "Imaging, MS they are going to give us MSDN to be used in the Development Network, so no need to buy a License even under low cost to be used in the Development.

We had discussed about the DR Site, if all Production Network is Licensed under VMware ESX and had shifted to our DR Site, for 1 Day or 1 Month, they are not going to charge single Cent for DR Site.

In my opinion, VMware has to consider the DR Licenses for ESX or soon most of the people will shift to Xen Virtualization with Citrix or Oracle as Other Competitors already they know about the this.

VMware WeakUP Please, as other Competitors Started to Beaten

virtualisation simplifies DR, VMware are fully aware of this and therefore charge. For small shops this extra cost may mean they can not have DR plans that utilise this technology ... if however MS decide to be competative this is one area that they may use i.e. price for DR

[epping]

the point is as you correctly addressed is that you require the same hardware at your DR site as your production site. with virtualisation you no longer have this constrant

Scenario A

10 physical servers in prod, 10 in DR

Sceniro B

1/2 ESX servers in Prod, 1/2 ESX servers in DR (even with the vmware licenses u are still saving $$, also u can use different hardware i.e. maybe older boxes)

[ejward]

I think it really is the same. A powered off ESX server does nothing for you either. You don't pay for a license for each VM. You can freely copy these VMs anywhere you want. If you copy them to a SAN at your DR site, there's no cost associated with it. If you turned on these VMs and ran them with Vmware player or server at your DR site (And that might be an option for you) there wouldn't be a cost. I think this is an area where Vmware should make a change. Maybe they have and we're not up to speed. Dell is giving away ESXi with every server it sells. Something had to have changed.

On another note, most copies of Windows do not let you move the OS to another piece of physical hardware more than once in 60 days unless the soruce hardware is taken out of commission. Hence the lawsuite Vmware has against Microsoft because it technically makes Vmotion illegal. Anyway, how does DR work for Microsoft? If my datacenter loses power and I fire up all my Windows VMs at a DR site, technically I've moved my Windows machines to new hardware. I can't legally move that VM back to the data center when the power comes back on unless the power comes on 61 days later.

[AustinPowers]

the point is as you correctly addressed is that you require the same hardware at your DR site as your production site. with virtualisation you no longer have this constrant

But the benefit of virtualization happens on the production network. And you pay for the benefit there when you buy the ESX licenses for the production network. There's no additional benefit of VMware over Windows on a dark DR site.

[ejward]

Hi,

Firstly, they said we are not supporting MS Products while it's running on ESX Servers. But they do while it's running on their unmatured Virtualization Server And if we have Premier Microsoft Support.

Microsoft fully supports running Windows Server under Vmware as long as you have a Premier Support Agreement. Make sure you specifically ask about that.

[epping]

i think we will have to agree to disagree on this one

with these kind of value propositions it comes down to cost, a DR model based on physical servers costs more than one based on virtualisation technology, VMware know this and they can charge for it

[bradley4681]

I've seen people install ESX in evaluation mode, configure it as needed to support production in a DR enviroment and then power off the machines. When needed they are powered on and pointed towards a licensing server.

Cheers,

Bradley Sessions

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

[habibalby]

ejward,

Yes, they do but Premier Support is required and i have mentioned that as well.

BR,

Habibalby

[habibalby]

That's a good trick to save a License Cost for the Dark DR Site

I've seen people install ESX in evaluation mode, configure it as needed to support production in a DR enviroment and then power off the machines. When needed they are powered on and pointed towards a licensing server.

Cheers,

Bradley Sessions

If you found this or other information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful".

[AustinPowers]

Yeah, as long as you don't have any communications problems getting to the license server, or license file problems, or any one of a dozen other issues that might prevent it form working. If this is a DR site, I wouldn't want to be dependent on something that hasn't been 100% tested.