After delivering a Virtualization event in Austin a week ago I decided I needed to post the highlight of the Hyper-V Licensing updates to my blog to make it easier to find. While the Microsoft website has a wealth of information, its often feels like you are hunting for buried treasure to find it.
Here’s the main point from the licensing overview page:
Overview of Licensing for Virtualization
Specialized license rights for relevant products can help you take advantage of existing and future technologies across the complete Microsoft virtualization platform.
Run up to four software instances at a time in virtual operating system environments on a server under a single server license.
Run any number of software instances in physical and virtual operating system environments on a server.
Run any number of software instances in one physical server and any number of virtual operating system environments on the server.
Flexible, subscription-based licensing to run Windows Vista Enterprise operating system in virtual machines running on servers. Each VECD license allows one user to access up to four virtual instances per access device running concurrently.
SMSE offers a comprehensive solution that includes Virtual Machine Manager and the four main products of System Center. One SMSE license allows you to manage the physical operating system environments and any number of virtual ones on a server.
MDOP offers a suite of technologies that can help reduce application management costs, instantly deliver virtualized applications (via Microsoft Application Virtualization for Desktops, formerly SoftGrid), and better control desktop environments, enhancing IT responsiveness and user uptime.
You can get complete details on license rights for specific products.Go to the Microsoft Product Licensing Web site
Resources
Use these downloadable documents to learn more about Microsoft Volume Licensing and virtualization.