Another boring MS Office, desktop vs terminal server, licensing question

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YeOldeStonecat

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Volume licensing, starting to setup and utilize a terminal server at a client.
They have volume licensing via TechSoup, say 20 licenses for everything...
SBS 5 plus 15 cals
Terminal Server 1 server cal for 2008
Terminal Server user cals 20
Office Professional Plus 2007 20

They have say, 15 desktop computers between 2 offices.
Some of those 15 people from a branch office remote through a VPN tunnel to the terminal server to access their foundation grant software. So for ease of flipping through RDP and their desktop, I installed Office on the terminal server so they can more easily work within GIFTS and Outlook and Word.

They also have 3x people that do not work at either office, but work remotely from home office..and they directly access the terminal server. So I'm sure they suck up an additional Office license. But I'm not sure about the people who use the terminal server and have Office already licensed/installed on their desktop in the branch offices.
 
I wish I had something more to contibute, but I just feel I have to comment and say MS licensing makes my head hurt. redoing a SPLA right now, I loath it...

One thing I will say (although off topic) I'm very glad MS lets you use the same licenses at your DR site as your primary site.
 
From the way I understand it, it's not the reality of the usage, it's the potential usage that counts.

The usage of Office on another computer requires a valid Office license. Those licenses are generally "per computer" as opposed to "per user". The "home and office" clause is a separate deal. So you'll technically need to license any potential usage of office on the terminal server. I just went through a similar deal for one of my clients. Smallish Insurance broker that's moving to a TS enviornment for their LOB and everything else. Unfortunately, even with Office installed locally, they still needed licenses to use office in the TS environment.
 
Berg0 said:
One thing I will say (although off topic) I'm very glad MS lets you use the same licenses at your DR site as your primary site.
Click to expand...

Actually, per my SPLA rep

The base operating system needs to be reported for both the active & passive server. The only product that includes use rights covering passive servers is SQL.
 
k1pp3r said:
Actually, per my SPLA rep

The base operating system needs to be reported for both the active & passive server. The only product that includes use rights covering passive servers is SQL.
Click to expand...

using filer based replication the machines are the same machine.

From Licensing Microsoft Server Products with Microsoft Virtual Server and Other Virtual Machine Technologies:

To help you take advantage of the deployment flexibility that VM technology offers,
all products in the Microsoft Servers licensing models are licensed by running instance.
The use rights no longer specify the number of times the software may be installed and
used on a server. Rather, each license gives you the right to run a certain number of
instances of the software on a particular server at a time.
Click to expand...

I could be misinterpreting.

again, I hate MS licensing.
 
i usually just call MS for this, 5 minutes on the phone and i know whats good =)
 
They're cheap, but aren't you limited to one purchase per year with Tech Soup?

I've always been under the impression that a user is licensed for office on either machine as long as they're only running one instance, that's the way we do it anyway. I believe a user is also compliant if they have a laptop and desktop but only use one at a time.
 
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