MS Licensing Clarification

[JohnnyBravo]

I am looking for an answer to something I have been trying to find out myself, but as always with licensing not really found a real answer I can be confident with.

I am planning to deploy 200 xp desktops via thin client \ VDI and was initially hoping there would be some licensing benefits in regards the number of instances I could run on a single license, as with Win Server Ent and datacenter.

I notice there are Vista licensing benefits where i could run 4 instances but wondered how I would go on with downgrading the Vista license and running XP. Would this still qualify.

Then I came across VECD licensing and wondered how this would fit in with the downgrading. Is it even possible?

All help would be well appreciated.

As would any thoughts on the possibilites of running MAC OSX on ESX\VDI for the purpose of DR?

Thanks

[knudt]

If you have Volume Licensing with Software Assurance, then you have up/downgrade rights to all licenses.

VECD for thin clients is licensed per end user device and allows concurrent remote access to up to 4 desktops, which can be virtual, blade PC or regular PC

Unfortunately, there is no licensing available similar to what we take advantage of on the server OS side.

MacOSX is not a currently support guest operating system on ESX, so I'm afraid that woudn't be "supported", though it might work.

[JohnnyBravo]

Thanks for that.

Saw this which has complicated things for me even further. This to me indicates that we can take advantage similar to that with the server products?

No mention of the VECD here either...

So in theory I could get away with purchasing 50 (approx) vista enterprise, down grade them and run 200(approx) XP VD's?

[knudt]

This post is over 1.5 years old, which explains the lack of VECD (didn't exist then). What he's explaining is that with SA on Vista Business+ you can run up to four VMs LOCALLY.

VECD (the C stands for Centralized) allows remote access to desktops, in your case a VDI based desktop in a VM.

VECD will allow a single device to access four concurrent VDs. If you have 50 end users connecting to four VDs each, then yes, you'd only need 50 licenses. If you have 200 end users concurrently connecting to one VD each, then you'll need 200 licenses of VECD.

Also keep in mind that there is an additional tier of licensing for VECD if you're running full Vista/XP end user devices (as opposed to thin clients).

[JohnnyBravo]

yeah found a few which are dated which is why I decided to post.

Thanks for providing more updated info, although its not what I wanted to hear.

Ill look more into VECD.

[knudt]

No problem. Microsoft really is kicking us in the shins on this one. Unless there's an uprising or microsoft releases their own VDI solution (scheduled for 2010) I don't think there will be much love.

If you happen to be in the Education realm and have a Campus License, I've heard the pricing is MUCH more attractive.

[NeedBeer]

We are in the education realm and have campus agreements, and are currently in talks with Microsoft in relation to licensing, and to be honest it seems they're trying to bend us over the table and force us down their terminal services path through sheer brutal pricing. Whilst we are not too sure how far down the VDM/View track we'll go as yet (will see how it all pans out), one of the potential uses we see is remote education delivery where we would deliver a classroom pc directly to a remote student via View. What Microsoft are telling us is we'd need to purchase licensing for every potential "device" out there that may connect to a virtual machine at any time.

As we have 30,000 or more currently enrolled students at any one time, and absolutely no way of ever knowing how many "devices" may at some stage connect to a View session, this model makes it completely impossible for us to proceed with that particular tangent of delivery, we could potentially be up for millions for very small amounts of usage per license. It'd be nice if Microsoft would crawl out of the stoneage and grow an understanding of concurrent usage models.

Also interesting that they do not apply the same licensing restrictions on their own terminal server solution, which strangely they are trying to push us into as a "cost effective" alternative.... Sounds much to me like unfair practices in the marketplace to price their competition out....

[K-MaC]

Could always drop Microsoft altogether and go with Linux.

Cheers

Kevin

[nonphixion]

I also need clarification on this topic. I am trying to price a 100 user View solution with users connecting from their current non-SA XP Pro desktops. A Microsoft licensing rep told me that I would simply buy VECD and did not need VECD for SA. From all the documentation, and even my distributor, I get the feeling that the non-SA VECD is for thin-clients only and that if users connect from a Windows desktop than that desktop would have to be covered by software assurance.

Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Thanks in advance.

James

[szekelyk]

Hi,

check this http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/D/4/3D42BDC2-6725-4B29-B75A-A5B04179958B/Licensing_Vista_wi...