Cloud computing licensing Buyer beware.Software licensing, the bane of thousands of IT managers, just got more complicated.Managing how many users can access People.Soft or how many licenses of Windows 2.R2 you need is straightforward add the total up and write a check.But managing the number of licenses you need for a cloud deployment of your custom application Not so easy.Do you license by user Do you license by processorThe complications are endless.There are some very basic license models that come into play when a cloud computing project is kicked off, and understanding these is crucial to the licensing success of a project.Keeping the free and open source software separate from the not so free and closed source makes systems easier to manage.Joseph Foran.Contributor.The three basic license types are per user, per device and enterprise.Paying per user is a tried and true method wherein a user is granted a license to use the application or server.This is subdivided into concurrent users and total users.A concurrent user license simply means that you are licensed up to x number of users simultaneously.You can have 2.If the license is based on total users, 2.Per device licenses vary widely.Again, there is the per concurrent device and total device model, but there is also the per processor model, most often seen in databases and large applications.These licenses are given based on the total number of processors or processor cores present in a host system.You may have a SQL server, for example, with eight single core processors serving up an application with 1.In this case, you pay per processor in the host system.Then there is the enterprise license, the all you can eat smorgasbord of licensing.Whether you have 1.Of course, each of these licenses goes deeper.To put an application out to a user population inside a company, one must license the server operating systems, the applications, the databases and the end users, plus any development tools and middleware.Also see my notes on Oracle standby database enterprise and standard edition.Overview of Oracle Store License rules.The Oracle Store web.FileData/RE1AU7k?ver=729e' alt='Standard Edition Per Socket Licensing Agreements' title='Standard Edition Per Socket Licensing Agreements' />While complex, this is merely a math game of knowing what model best supports the needs of the organization and those consuming the application.For example, deploying a SQL based application via IIS to Windows 7 based users in a company of 3.Licensing plus the cloud.Now add in the cloud.Dynamically increasing and decreasing the number of servers hosting an application to meet demand is great when it comes to uptime, reliability, stability and performance.But figuring out how to license this is a nightmare.What if an application scales from 1.December holiday season How do you predict and license appropriately The answer thus far has been simple use open source options like Linux servers, Apache, My.SQL, Tomcat, Ruby on Rails.These tried and true stalwarts of the economically challenged and deep pocketed alike all have licensing costs equal to the number of Bugatti Veryons in the average persons home zero.True, open source support costs are often just as high as with closed source, but support is a cost to be paid regardless of platform.When an application cant be built using open source tools, however, there are frequently complications, and these complications are often severe enough to limit cloud computing projects to low hanging fruit i.One option to deal with this complexity is to utilize the proper vendor.While most major cloud providers like Amazon and Rackspace allow for Windows based servers and applications to exist in their clouds, running them there is often the wrong choice.The right choice, at least until Microsofts cloud licensing models change, is to either run the application internally on specified platforms with known licensing information forgoing the dynamics of growingcollapsing your cloud on demand or to use Microsofts own cloud services, which have fixed prices for the applications most commonly used.Making use of SQL Server in the cloud practically necessitates this, as it is impossible to tell just how many processors are being used in a cloud based server.That sort of hardware information, while appearing to be readily available via typical administrative tools Task Manager, System Information, etc.In a VMware environment, for example, your SQL server may be running in a virtual machine that shows one processor in Task Manager, but it may be running on an ESXVSphere host with eight processors or more.While that can be controlled in house with VMwares tools, that is not always the case with cloud providers.Using SQL Server via Microsofts own cloud platform eliminates any questions about licensing those processors.Working with open and closed source software.Keeping the free and open source software FOSS separate from the not so free and closed source makes systems easier to manage.While this is an easier way to deal with the complexities of licensing across the two major spheres of applications, there are also complexities that are more subtle and potentially more derailing to a project.One such problem can occur when you have a stack that encompasses both FOSS and closed applications.An example of this would be a Linux server accessing an Oracle database serving information via an ApacheTomcat server.Sounds fun, right It gets worse.Many common platforms, such as Oracles Real Application Cluster, are completely unsupported on cloud platforms like Amazon EC2 because of technical and licensing requirements.The database example above is actually one of the simplest, because the database can be kept anywhere where it is accessible to the application, including in house.Having the application itself be elastic and closed source is an exercise in mathematics that can drive even a theoretical physicist to the bottle if the potential for periodic and explosive growth is there.Oracle itself is very clear on this topic For the purposes of licensing Oracle programs in the cloud environment, customers are required to count each virtual core as equivalent to a physical core.This policy applies to all programs available on a processor metric.When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One or Standard Edition in the product name, the pricing is based on the size of the EC2 instances.EC2 instances with four or less virtual cores are counted as one socket, which is considered equivalent to a processor license.For EC2 instances with more than four virtual cores, every four virtual cores used rounded up to the closest multiple of four equate to a licensing requirement of one socket.Under cloud computing, Oracle Database Standard Edition can only be licensed on EC2 instances up to 1.Under cloud computing, Oracle Standard Edition One may only be licensed on EC2 instances up to eight virtual cores.This means that if you spin up 1.If you have a third pary tool that will spin up more dynamically, you might not know until its too late.And this brings us to the real dark side, as if any of these complex issues were a light side the penalty for non compliance.If an application is tightly locked around licensing, it may come to a screeching halt for some or all of the people who need to use that application when the license maximum is reached.Do you license by user Do you license by processorThe complications are endless.Joseph Foran.Take a Citrix Xen.App installation with 1.When user 1.If an application is limited to 1.And then, since the cloud providers might be on the hook too, there is the very real possibility of dealing with the Business Software Alliance or another watchdog body about the licensing infractions.A 1.Choice is the bread and butter of a good negotiator when it comes to complex enterprise contracts.It also entails accepting the possibility of having to live with difficult to fathom levels of license complexity that are not yet fully developed and in the mainstream.As the market stands now, developing, running and licensing applications with a minimum amount of complexity is best done through open source tools like the LAMP stack or in an all Microsoft environment in Azure.As these environments grow, and as customer needs change, so will the cloud licensing landscape.Hyper V and Guest Virtualization Licensing.Are you confused by just how virtual machine guest licensing works with Hyper V 2.R2 Ive been reading a lot of blog and forum posts, and it seems like this might be the most confusing subject in the world of Hyper V right now.It doesnt help that that a lot of people who really dont understand it are doing their best to help others.The phrase, When the blind lead the blind, they will both fall in a ditch, comes to mind.Lets clear away some of the confusion.Disclaimer.Most of our posts are technical in nature.Licensing is a legal matter.I am not a lawyer and I did not consult with a lawyer on this post.The contents of this post are intended to be a guideline to help you understand the concepts of a specific licensing detail.It does not constitute legal advice or interpretation.Neither I nor Altaro software are offering legal advice and this post cannot be construed as such.We cannot be held responsible for any negative outcomes of the usage of any of the contents of our post, whether it is through an error on our part or a misunderstanding on yours.For official answers, contact Microsoft Licensing or check with your reseller.Authorized resellers should have someone on staff that can authoritatively answer licensing questions.I have consulted with two resellers extensively on this subject and have never been asked to pay anything for the call.There are very steep fines and bounties associated with licensing violations.It is worth your time to get official answers.Probably the clearest material that Microsoft publishes on the subject is the Product Use Rights document.OEM Licenses.This post will deal with Volume Licenses, which are an agreement you make with Microsoft with the assistance of a reseller.OEM licenses can be customized by an equipment manufacturer and therefore might have different rules than you find anywhere else.Do not assume that an OEM license works the same way as a standard volume license.Usually, the greatest difference is that they are not transferable.The Unbreakable Rule for Windows Server Licensing.At least as far as Standard and Datacenter Editions are concerned, there is one absolutely inviolable rule about Windows Server licensing a Windows Server license is always bound to a specific piece or group of hardware.The specifics have changed over time, but this fact goes back as far as I can remember.For 2.R2, the bound hardware is one or two physical CPUs in a single motherboard.A single CPU system requires one license.A dual CPU system requires one license.A quad CPU system requires two licenses.This is pretty easy to work out from here.Virtual machines are not directly licensed.Yes, you have to plug in keys to activate them, but keys are not licenses, they do not represent licenses, and just because you can get a system to accept a key does not mean that it is properly licensed.You can get yourself into a lot of trouble by thinking that your virtual machines are licensed.Why Because virtual machines can move, thats why.Remember the unbreakable rule the physical CPUs are what is licensed.The nice thing about OEM licenses is that the manufacturer usually plops a sticker onto the chassis of the licensed system.That helps you remember where the license belongs.When you get a Volume License, you dont get a sticker.Thats because Volume Licenses are transferable.But, as youll see, the transferability of a volume license isnt a free for all.My recommendation is to find some way to clearly denote which physical hardware is getting which license.The Hyper V Server License.So, youve downloaded the free Hyper V Server, and now people are telling you that you dont have a license to run Windows Server guest and you need to install a different management operating system.What to do Well, the first thing to understand is that what you get with the free Hyper V Server license is a license to run Hyper V Server.Thats it.It can have up to 1,0.I have no idea how many turned off virtual machines.Either way, it can probably run a lot more VMs than your hardware can handle.But, it doesnt have a license for any of them, no matter what they are.So, do you actually need to install a different hypervisor Of course not.You just need to make sure you buy enough licenses to cover the guests running on that host.You always need to buy enough licenses to cover the guests running on a host.Seems pretty obvious when its stated like that, but its really not strange to find people who overthink and miss that.The Windows Server Standard Edition License.It used to be that when you bought a Windows license, you got a piece of paper.Nowadays, you dont even get that anymore.You get an e mail that tells you where to go look at a digital copy of your Windows license.But, I can make you a graphic that helps you conceptualize what you get and helps you understand why I didnt choose graphical design as a career Windows Server Standard License with Guest Privileges.Whats in the box is a license for one physical instance of Windows Server 2.Standard and two virtual instances of the same.The crude chains with the odd transparency are intended to show that these are permanently tied together.They can never be taken apart.Never, never, never.Well come back to this.The Windows Server Datacenter Edition License.The Datacenter Edition comes in a similar package, but this time you get unlimited guest instances.You can also downgrade to Standard edition in any of the instances, as shown in this image with slightly less odd transparency The Windows Server Datacenter Edition License.As with the Standard Edition, the physical and the virtual cannot be split from each other.Not at all.Dont ask, dont try.What the Chains Mean.Remember the inviolable rule the licenses are bound to specific hardware.All of them.You cant split guest privileges across hardware, whether in the same machine or across different machines.If you use one Datacenter license for a quad CPU machine, then you have a problem.Two of the CPUs are unlicensed.Since theres no way to restrict the physical instance or the virtual instances, then you are out of compliance and in trouble.If you have one Datacenter edition license and two physical computers, you have a problem.I think its possible to have all the guests running on a single host in a pure failover environment, but Id definitely want a true licensing expert to say if thats legal.One thing is for certain, if you ever Live Migrate from one to the other and have more than one active guest, youre out of compliance.The only way you might possibly be able to work the pure failover angle is if the only time guests ever moved was in response to a complete host failure.Even if its legal, its certainly dangerous.If youre struggling with the idea of the license belonging specifically to the hardware, try to remember that the guests arent actually licensed at all.Lets say you buy a Standard license for physical host SV Hyper.V1.You install Windows Server Standard on it.You then install a guest virtual machine with Windows Server Standard.Theres nothing wrong with that everything is fine.Later, you build a new computer, SV Hyper.V2, and Live Migrate the guest to it.You are now out of compliance.The virtual guest privilege stays with its hardware on SV Hyper.V1.It does not follow the virtual machine, no matter where it goes.The destination system must have a ready and available license.What the Chains Do Not Mean.The biggest point of confusion I see being circulated now is a myth that there is some magic genie that only comes to life when you install Windows Server as the physical instance, and this wonderful creature grants special licensing powers.This is absolutely not true.You cant separate the physical instance from the virtual instances, but you are absolutely not required to use them all.You can buy one Standard Edition license, install Windows Server as the physical instance, and use only one Windows Server guest.You do not have to use the other virtual instance.A Software That Can Crack Any Software '>A Software That Can Crack Any Software . 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