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VMware cluster and Microsoft 2008r2 datacenter

M

ManateeMatt

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 27, 2009
Messages
145
So I have been reading many different thing in regards to this.

1. If I get a Server 2008r2 datacenter license I can only use it on that one server. IE if I have 3 esxi boxes I'd need 3 sets of licenses.
2. Datacenter requires 2 cpus. So I'd have to give it 2 vcpus.
3. You get one Datacenter license for your cluster, and away you go as long as you assign 2vcpus
3a. Same as above but it cares not if it has 2vcpud
4. Buy the license and do what ever your want.

I've gotten all 4 answers from ms, so I'm wondering if anyone has the truth...
 
Datacenter allows downgrade rights. One of the major benefits is as you p2v and build out new VMs you're not really restricted to which version of Windows you load while using datacenter. All of our ESXi servers are licensed with datacenter but I don't think we have one copy of datacenter installed on a VM anywhere. Just remember to license all the sockets in your phyiscal ESXi servers and be done with it, and add in the cost of datacenter to any future host purchases.

Remember when you license ANY version of windows it is tied to the physical hardware, not the guest VMs. You could have a physical server with only 2 sockets licensed with datacenter, yet those sockets have multiple cores, so you could easily create VMs which have more than 2 vCPUs. By default each vCPU shows up as a discrete socket to the guest VM. Doing that with your VMs would not violate your licenses of datacenter, so remember to keep the virtualization and physical abstracts where they belong.
 
ManateeMatt said:
So I have been reading many different thing in regards to this.

1. If I get a Server 2008r2 datacenter license I can only use it on that one server. IE if I have 3 esxi boxes I'd need 3 sets of licenses.
2. Datacenter requires 2 cpus. So I'd have to give it 2 vcpus.
3. You get one Datacenter license for your cluster, and away you go as long as you assign 2vcpus
3a. Same as above but it cares not if it has 2vcpud
4. Buy the license and do what ever your want.

I've gotten all 4 answers from ms, so I'm wondering if anyone has the truth...
Click to expand...

1. No.. From what we've found it's licensed per socket. You may have 3 servers, but each server has 4 sockets in it. You need need 12 data center licenses. Now keep in mind it's PER SOCKET NOT PER CORE.
2. I don't think so. I doubt you are required to have 2 vcpu to make it work.
3. Not sure where your going with it... but probably refered to #2.
4. Correct. The datacenter licenses is good for Server Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter. But the one question I would ask. In what your doing do you really need to use datacenter? or do you just take advantage of the licensing model? Last job we sold a handful of datacenter licensing, but would be willing to bet 9 times out of 10 it was used as server standard or enterprise only.
 
The biggest advantage to Datacenter licensing is it allows unlimited VM's per licensed host.

So if you had one ESXi box, with 2 physical CPU sockets then you would need two licenses of Datacenter but on that host you could run as many VM's of Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter as the server can handle.

Enterprise only allows up to 4 VM's per host and Standard only allows 1. I know at my company our VM density is more than 4 VM's per host.

Here is a good blog post from MS on this, this concept applies to ESX.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/mattmcsp...-windows-server-in-a-virtual-environment.aspx

Keep in mind though the host doesn't count as a VM license if you virtualize on another hypervisor. So as an example: if you purchase Enterprise licensing, you could install Windows 2008 Enterprise on the physical host and install Hyper-V and load up 4 additional VM's but if you run ESXi on the physical host you could only load up the 4 additional VM's.
 
Well, I came up with this conclusion:

Buy 1 data-center license per cpu, then have fun.
 
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/licensing-datacenter.aspx

Basically you have to buy a license for each Socket (2 minimum) + CALs. Servers with Windows Server Standard or Enterprise licenses covered by Software Assurance can be “stepped up” to a Windows Server Datacenter Edition processor license to take advantage of its unlimited virtualization rights. Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter can be purchased through Volume Licensing directly from Microsoft or resellers, or from OEMs preinstalled on servers.
 
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