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Microsoft Adopts Virtual Licenses
* * Beatles-Beatles is one of many to let us know that Microsoft has changed how they handle licensing for Windows Server and related products with regards to virtual machine environments. The new regiment will allow per-processor licensing to be handled based on the number of virtual processors rather than the number of physical processors in the computer.
Great, I guess this means I'll continue to depend upon my own virtual licensing scheme, based on the amount of warez I can download.
Either is that greed talking or they feel that people cheat with terminal servers to avoid buying OS licenses.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
So if I have a server with a dual-core processor, I have to pay twice the price for Windows? With SQL Server or something else, you can limit it to only run on one processor, but not Windows.
They DID find a way to get even more money from their customers. And when we thought they were over, they finally did something innovative.
Is this supposed to be cheaper? Unless people were running one virtual machine per dual-processor box, they will now be paying more. Isn't the purpose of virtualization to run multiple servers on one box, so one user can't access the other? Am I very confused?
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Other possible ways to count: ...
- MB per instalation;
- Number of temp files created and not deleted;
- Number of blue screen of death;
- Number of Bluetooth devices you won't use after upgrading service pack;
- Number of Linux Admin that will nag you for using Bill Gates OS;
I am portuguese. If you think my written english is bad, try posting in portuguese!
I guess the answer for this is to start paying for virtual licenses with virtual money.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
This means they'll be accepting virtual money, right?
FLR
So if you're only running one instance of Windows (but sharing processors among threads) you're still only need one license. It's when you try to run 2 distinct copies of windows simultaneously on the same PC that you have to pay twice.
Although this is loosely equivalent to having to pay for your TV twice if you use it once for primary viewing and again for picture in picture...
This is true, but so is the opposite situation (which is probably more likely a situation).
If you have a four CPU server running 6 virtual OS's, if you only want SQL Server on one of those OS's you only need one copy, where as before if you wanted it on 1 you had to buy four copies.
So if *someone* were to *accidentally* release a virus that doubled the number of virtual processors (I don't know how that's done, I'm assuming it's in software)
A "virtual processor" is created inside a copy of vmware, virtual pc, or other PC emulation[1] software. Good luck fitting a copy of a PC emulator into a worm's payload.
[1] Pedants: Virtualization involves emulating most of a PC, even if it does use JIT recompilation from x86 to x86. This is necessary in part because of design flaws in some kernel-mode instructions in x86.
Also check out his great series on running old games under Virtual PC.
/. is irrelevant.
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. -Henry David Thoreau
More to the point you had to buy a 4 cpu licence for that single virtual server even though most virtual servers only virtualize a single processor and so you were paying the 4 cpu price for a 1cpu equivalent server.
To address the comment about dual core processors I am pretty darn sure I read in the past that Microsoft had adopted a policy of treating a single dual core processor as 1 cpu and not 2.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
64bit systems were invented because you can emulate 2 32bit processors on them. And so instead of just 4 I can now run 8 C64 emulator instances on them.
1) This change affects only virtual processors, not physical ones. If your running VMWare or MS Virtual Server than this is for you. Otherwise move along.
2)This licencing scheme is designed to save companies money instead of giving up more for MS. For example, say you have a 16 processor system, and you VMWare it so your running 4 instances of Windows Server 2003 with SQL server. under the old system, you had to buy SQL Server for all 16 Processors. Now you would only buy for the 4 VM's
3) Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition is now licenced for 4 instances of itself per Machine. So you could run 4 Windows 2K3 Servers VM's on one server and MS says "go for it"
The Details from the Horse at MS
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Don't know much about it, but how would they handle the situation where I'd limit say Windows to VCPU 1 and Office to VCPU 2.
Seems like I should only have to pay the single VCPU price, but I imagine that won't be the case will it...
Was I the only one to misread the title as "Microsoft adopts Viral licenses"?
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
I love this quote from the article: Higher prices 'benefit' consumers. I'll have to remember that one. </sarcasm>
"I filter at +6, and have yet to miss out on an important comment." (#822545)
Yes, MS has been covering this for years, by requiring you to have a CAL (Client Access License) to be able to connect to a Terminal Server, or well, any of their servers really.
If you've got SharePoint, MS SQL, Exchange and Terminal Server all running on the same server and you use that server for file and print services, guess what you need 5 CALs for each and every client.
1 client licenes for Exchange
1 client license for MS SQL
1 SharePoint client license (SharePoint btw, requires MS SQL)
1 client license for Terminal Services
1 for file and printing
They're just raping their customers even more now. Per processor or per virutual processor licensing scheme are total bullshit. I bet within the next 10-20 years we'll see this come up in the courts.
I'll just pay them with virtual money
We should have been
So much more by now
Too dead inside
To even know the guilt
And i assume a virtual cpu license is cheaper then a hard cpu license, since performace is less.
So now you get a dual core cpu ( soon you wont have a choice ), and you get screwed by Microsoft.
What is next, back to per cycle charges?
Or how about just change to a national 'per brain' charge? Once a person is born, they just start charging you since eventually you will use a computer of some sort.
Its all a f-ing scam. Should they be able to make a profit? Sure. But should they be allowed to screw you? No.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why does one copy of Windows cost more if you have more CPUs, since it's still only one copy of Windows? That's like buying a whole pizza where the price is based on the number of slices it's cut into. A pizza cut into 6 slices would cost $6, but the same pizza cut into 10 slices would cost $10.
It really should be 1 CD & 1 Product Key = 1 price.
is come up with a vitual host that has no processors
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
What's the difference between running two instances of Application X on one CPU, and running one instance of Application X on each of two CPUs?
It boils down to the question "what is virtual, anyway?". If I run a process under an emulator, versus running it on the native operating system, there's no difference as far as the application is concerned. Only its execution environment has changed. So presumably I should require two licenses of the operating system, because I am running two instances of it.
It makes sense to count not CPUs but the number of concurrent instances of an application, irrespective where they run. For applications which are licensed according to some scale, of course. Thanks but no thanks, I'll stick with linux and OSS!
* the gatesean technical term for krapware
I think this kind of licensing is for situations where you run multiple VMs in blades.
My company recently setup a rack of 40 blades, each with 16GBs of RAM and all attached to SAN. Each blade is capable of running about 10 VMs. The same setup is duplicated at the redundant site, and a high-speed connection between the two locations, with about 92TBs of storage between them. Supposedly, the VMs can be moved around between any of the blade between the two locations, giving us the possibility of about 800 VMs...all within about 1 rack's worth of space.
Now, each blade does NOT have 10 processors, but is capable of running 10 VMs easily. And though I can't say I like Microsoft for wanting to charge for virtual processors, I can understand why they'd do it.
Au contraire - (That's French for Kind of - not really)
Each copy of XP Pro comes with a CAL for Terminal services - but only if your server for Terminal Services is running Server 2000.
Those CAL's are not valid if your TS box is running Server 2003 (once known as XP Server)
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
It's based on the perceived value of the purchase. Let's say a company needs to do a lot of SQL stuff. They could just set up a bunch of single or dual processor boxes, pay X to license separete instances of SQL for each, for a total of X*Bunch. Or, they could buy a big bad killer 16-way machine and outperform the lot of them (er, depending on what you're doing), and thus not need to buy so much of the server software. Lost revenue for the publisher... although, depending on the product, it's exactly that hyper-serious big-dollar enterprise corporate user that they spent the majority of the R&D fine tuning for. Sure, the average department throws up a SQL server to do some simple storage/queries... but by the time someone's putting a $50,000 machine to work in what's obviously a seriously mission critical role for a very large operation, well, it can't screw up. And more to the point, MS is on the hook for a certain amount of support under such circumstances (those very large purchases rarely happen without direct MS sales/tech involvement before, during, and after the transaction). Your average cube-jockey support person is not equipped to deal with the network, the storage, the business environment, or the pressure that usually goes hand in hand with the use of, say, a 16-processor enterprise db box (and the cluster it's probably in). That is an example of why it costs more money.
And you know what? Microsoft is not stupid. If Oracle or DB2 wasn't priced the same way, they wouldn't do it. But there's a reason that super-duper heavy duty products/implementations are expensive - it's not just "because they can."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You're clueless. For people running VMware and other virtualizations with certain server apps, this will make MS's products less expensive to license. RTFA. "Anti-customer?" Well, since you've got the whole point of this move of their's exactly, precisely backwards, it makes sense you'd think that, I guess. Being exactly, completely wrong probably has you seeing much of the world incorrectly. MS isn't committing suicide with this, they're being smart, doing their customers right, making it easier for the consulting army to make good (and cheaper) recommendations. Read before you spout off next time.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Every processor virtual or otherwise needs to be licensed for each product. So a 2 processor box with 6 virtual processors instances is 8 processors (the windows that booted the virtual processors) and the virtual processors.
This high number of virtual processors is likely to come into fashion in an ASP situation. If you look at vmware enterprise-like solutions where you can have standby virtual processors on other machines and the like.
Seems like a money grab to me that will just alienate folk, just like their user/connection + terminal service licensing destroyed the terminal services. Making it more expensive to license a product in TSE and it did a regular desktop.
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Whatever happened to just buting a copy of the OS and it ran. I mean really like they need to be bastards and charge for instances of a software running. I mean I can install and run this game three times, but I only paid once. They don't seem to have a problem with that. It seems that your not buying a product anymore. Pretty soon they will charge per service per virtual server. That'll be sweet I bet. I just want to buy the damn cd and do whatever I want with what I friggin paid for.
w00t
0.3% of GDP on Windows licences! Are you having a proverbial "laugh"?
UK GDP - source Google - $ 1,782,000,000,000
0.3% of UK GDP = $5,346,000,000 or $5.4bn
I'm sure the UK spends a lot on Windows. But bear in mind that Microsoft's total annual revenues are only about $40bn, of which roughly half is client (Windows XP, etc.) and server (Windows 2003 Server). (In fact this over-states total Windows licenses, as there is also SQL Server, etc. in there.) But even on a best case, you're saying that the UK buys more than a quarter of all Microsoft Windows licenses. In fact, what you're really doing is making up sprurious statistics to get some temporary kudos.
Next item of absurdity: "the United Kingdom spends 0.3% of GDP on it's transport infrastructure". Really? Source please. Of course there is no source, because this is a ridiculous made up number. Lets go to the UK Office of National Statistics: oh! it turns out that the UK government (excluding what is spent by private industry) spends, da da, £20bn on transport infrastructure. (Which, at today's exchange rate is about $35bn, or around 2% of GDP.)
A beggar found shelter in a tavern and sat by a fireplace where a hunk of meat was roasting on a spit. Before eating his meager dinner, consisting of a piece of dry bread, he held it out toward the meat to catch some of the flavour. The tavern keeper saw him and demanded payment, causing the poor fellow considerable distress, since he had no money. A wise man who was eating at a nearby table saw the commotion and asked the keeper what the problem was. "This thief is stealing the flavour of my meat!" the keeper said. "If he wants it, he better pay for it or git out." "That's all right," said the wise man. He pulled out a coin, threw it down on the fireplace, picked it back up and replaced it in his pocket. "For the flavour of your meat, I have now paid you with the chime of my coin."
Most IBM software is priced per CPU. And everything after that is in the customer's favor. If it's a dual core CPU you pay for one CPU, not two (unlike, say, Oracle). If you use virtualization software (like z/VM, LPARs, Virtual PC, or VMware) you only pay for the number of CPUs that the software actually executes on. If that means you run 300 instances of DB2 for Linux on a single Linux mainframe CPU running z/VM, you pay for one CPU, not 300. Unlike Microsoft. If you want to switch from DB2 for Windows to DB2 for Linux (on the mainframe or anywhere else), fine -- the processor licenses are cross-platform. Don't pay again. The main reason corporate customers run virtual machine technology is so they can consolidate the ridiculous numbers of test and development servers which cost a fortune. Under IBM's pricing policy that's encouraged, and they can get their costs under control. Under Microsoft's new policy it'll cost those businesses more if they use virtualization to any significant degree.
In the mainframe world they have several ways of costing:
Per LPAR (virtual machine) capacity
Per CPU seconds used (rationalised for costing)
Per access - With some programs you pay for the number of times the program is run.
We recently had to negotiate with CA because we upgraded a mainframe (nearly doubled its capacity) and CA argued that we owed them more due to the LPAR having greater capacity.
This is akin to Windows Server Edition costing more because you are running it on a 3.4Ghz machine rather than a 3.0Ghz machine.
After dealing with mainframes for four years I have come to this concolusion when it comes to money: Companies will charge every cent they can, in every way they can up to the point of the customer not using their product.
The ending to the story above is quite nice. One of our managers nicely told CA that since we have not increased our usage of their product they can either submit a better offer than a $300,000 increase (we're halfway through a contract btw) or we will migrate to another product. We are talking about CA AllFusion Endevor here. There are alternatives. CA knows it. We know it. A better deal was done. (No, we are not privy to the details, only that it was more than what we are currently paying, far less than what they demanded, and we are continuing to use CA Endevor. I think someone tipped them off that we could be expanding to use more CA products in the future and that alienating us could cost them a lot of money).
http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=259
However: For what we pay for the mainframe to run is nothing compared to what it costs to do the same transactions on Midrange. Ever looked up the price of using webMethods?
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I only mow my lawn about every two weeks. My neighbor across the street mows his every week. Shouldn't he have to pay twice as much for a mower as I do?
If software companies are allowed to control "their property" in this way, I don't see why sellers of physical products won't eventually do the same thing. Instead of buying a product and owning it, you'll merely be buying a license to use it for a certain amount of time. Then the license will expire and you'll either have to renew it or throw the product away. Tell me how this is different from what software companies are already doing?
Samba 3 already does most AD things more efficiently and flexibly than AD. Samba 4 will absolutely ace it.
Not sure what MS-Exchange features you're looking for, either. Semi-automatically misconfiguring the HELO string? Dinking with attachments (maybe bundling them all into a WINMAIL.DAT file)? Write access to the entire mail database for the lowliest user? Randomly hanging onto mail for half an hour or so? Name your favourite!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing