Win Server 2012 - Downgrade Rights?

KuJaX

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As I understand it, Windows Server 2012 Standard has one physical and two virtual licenses. Windows Server 2008 Standard has one physical and one virtual (but the physical cannot run any services).

So why can't someone just buy Windows Server 2012 Standard, install it on the physical, and then use "downgrade rights" to install Windows Server 2008 as the two virtual machines?
 
There's no reason you couldn't, 2012 Standard has downgrade rights to 2008 R2 Enterprise as well.
 
As far as I know, you can't run services on the physical host for 2012 standard either.
 
OMG this is absolute nonsense, Microsoft strongly suggests that if you install the Hyper V services on the host, you shouldn't also make it a DC, DNS, DHCP server, but you still can, there is nothing to stop you. I've had MS support remote into servers I manage that are doing just this, they never say anything. Maybe if I got into a support scenario where I was having AD, DNS or DHCP or Hyper V issues they might say its an unsupported configuration, but that would be the worst of it.

As for the downgrade rights, and I could be wrong here, but if you downgrade, you have to downgrade both the physical and virtual, you can't stay at 2012 for the host and just downgrade the virtual licenses.
 
Its tough to tell from the Microsoft speak what the heck they mean, but sure, its possible you can downgrade the VM licenses.
 
Server 2012 Standard allows you to downgrade your bit rights to any previous version of Enterprise, Standard, or Essentials editions, down to 2003. Kind of hard to run a VM on a physical 2003 server, and everything I've read online points to the virtual licenses being able to downgrade seperate from the physical. The activation center didn't give me any grief when I had to apply downgrade rights to activate a VM of 2003 at the very least.
 
so, the original post should work with their licensing?

Buy Windows Server 2012 Product with License Key
Install it on Physical.
Install Win Server 2012 OR 2008 VM
Install Win Server 2012 OR 2008 VM

Stays within the Windows Server 2012 license (one physical and two virtual) while using downgrade rights.

Anyone done this in the past? :)
 
It might be one of those questions for MS. I dont know their response time but its worth a shot?
 
Use Datacenter licensing that way in VMs, one license for the box (used to be per processor under 2008) and you're good to go with guest vms running whichever version you want as long as it's covered under downgrade rights.
 
Never ever make a Host part of the domain or depend on your DNS.
MS is right about that they previously said it was ok but its not.

1. What happens if your have a major AD problem?
2. What happens if your DNS doesn't work right?

Usually you also want to keep your virtualization traffic independent of your data network as well.
 
Never ever make a Host part of the domain or depend on your DNS.
MS is right about that they previously said it was ok but its not.

1. What happens if your have a major AD problem?
2. What happens if your DNS doesn't work right?

Usually you also want to keep your virtualization traffic independent of your data network as well.

I'm pretty sure it's not possible to do clustering without joining the machines to the domain.

It looks like you still need AD to create a cluster in 2012 but you can boot the cluster without it: http://blogs.technet.com/b/wincat/a...ced-integration-with-active-directory-ad.aspx
 
Server 2012 Standard - 1 Physical or 2 Virtual. If you run 2 virtual the only thing you can have on the physical box is Hyper-V. If you have any other role beyond hyper V installed on the physical box, you can only use 1 virtual server.

So say you have a physical box with server 2012 installed. You install Hyper-V and DHCP server. You can only have 1 virtual machine. If you install Server 2012 on a physical computer and only Hyper-V, you can create 2 Virtual machines. If you buy a second server 2012 standard license, you can put another 2 virtual machines on that box.

Server 2012 -> Enterprise 2008 downgrade - You only get 2 Enterprise virtual licenses (not 4). You used to be able to buy 1 copy of 2008 enterprise and get 4 more virtual machines (but it cost more than 2012 standard).

2008 standard - 1 physical or 1 virtual license, not both.

2008 enterprise 1 physical or 4 virtual. If you install anything beyond hyper v on the physical box, you only get 3 virtual.
 
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I'm pretty sure it's not possible to do clustering without joining the machines to the domain.

It looks like you still need AD to create a cluster in 2012 but you can boot the cluster without it: http://blogs.technet.com/b/wincat/a...ced-integration-with-active-directory-ad.aspx

I don't know why you wouldn't have a host use DNS (are you going to use host files?) or not put it on a domain, as long as you have working DNS and AD servers that are independent of the host it doesn't matter. Now if you have your only DC and DNS server running as a guest on that host, well then you're asking for issues, but who does that?
 
I'm pretty sure it's not possible to do clustering without joining the machines to the domain.

It looks like you still need AD to create a cluster in 2012 but you can boot the cluster without it: http://blogs.technet.com/b/wincat/a...ced-integration-with-active-directory-ad.aspx

Hence I don't use Hyper V.
For VMware I usually setup a dumby AD if I need too. Hopefully Vcenter appliance gets better so I never have to use MS server for it.
I had a HyperV and a VMWare cluster stop functioning because of AD/DNS issues. Vmware was much easier to recover from then the HyperV cluster. 2012 has caught up with Vmware but I don't have enough experience to comment in depth about it. I do know that I have had two major problem that I reported to MS with server 2012 features randomly get broken and not working in the first place.
I will give it another shot once I get sp1 on 2012.
 
I don't know why you wouldn't have a host use DNS (are you going to use host files?) or not put it on a domain, as long as you have working DNS and AD servers that are independent of the host it doesn't matter. Now if you have your only DC and DNS server running as a guest on that host, well then you're asking for issues, but who does that?

If the guest is DC and you end up having issues with the DC and lets say DNS stop functioning or the previous guy was a complete tool and your DNS stops resolving then how is your cluster going to communicate via hostnames? What happens if you for some reason have a trust problem between host and dc?
Why also would you keep your cluster info on a network that has normal users and god knows what other issues? (unless its a small network) Call me old fashioned but I like my static IP addressing any server, most admins will agree with me on this one as well.
 
If the guest is DC and you end up having issues with the DC and lets say DNS stop functioning or the previous guy was a complete tool and your DNS stops resolving then how is your cluster going to communicate via hostnames? What happens if you for some reason have a trust problem between host and dc?
Why also would you keep your cluster info on a network that has normal users and god knows what other issues? (unless its a small network) Call me old fashioned but I like my static IP addressing any server, most admins will agree with me on this one as well.

AD DNS just carries secondary zones of the zones on the infobloxes, the appliances are authoritative for all the zones. I keep physical DCs around for this very reason, same with vcenter and/or system center (depending on if you're running vSphere or Hyper-V), no reason to ever make any of your virtual infrastructured dependent on guest vms.
 
You can't create a cluster at all without machines that are joined to the domain.

If you have a Hyper-V cluster, it doesn't look like you can avoid joining them to the domain. You have no choice.
 
AD DNS just carries secondary zones of the zones on the infobloxes, the appliances are authoritative for all the zones. I keep physical DCs around for this very reason, same with vcenter and/or system center (depending on if you're running vSphere or Hyper-V), no reason to ever make any of your virtual infrastructured dependent on guest vms.

I use to keep physical boxes but found that I never had major outages plus backups were a pain in the ass. I do keep a an extra tie breaker box (host)that run vcenter off the primary hosts. I use veeam to backup so its quick work to restore. I had vmware clusters break but they extremly easy to fix its usually involves removing and re-adding the hosts back. The worst outage I had so far included me redeploying a prebuilt veeam guest and restoring a server in about 20 minutes. I have triple backups and a spare box always to pick up any slack. Knock on wood this has been working for me for the last 2 years.
 
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