Comments on: Microsoft Licensing for VDI – A.K.A: extortion

By: laptop battery

laptop battery — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:46:55 +0000

Jim Hill is doing sports, Johnny Mountain is lured out of retirement again for weather and Larry Welk is overhead in Sky 5…….

By: redder

redder — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:19:48 +0000

It's one of the reasons to keep using Windows XP in virtual desktops. Usually the company is already covered for the workstations (provided you use thin clients the actual amount of Windows licenses needed does not change because of virtualization). href="http://www.lypha.com ">Cheap Web Hosting

By: Cheap Web Hosting

Cheap Web Hosting — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:19:16 +0000

In a nutshell, to do anything “cool” with virtual desktops (VMware View, XenDesktop, vWorkspace), you need Vista licensed with software assurance. Only then can you buy a VECD license and proceed with cool solution involving streaming OSes or virtualizing XP. VECD = Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop, in case you are not following me.

By: seanc

seanc — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:28:33 +0000

Rich – VDI for SMB is a hassle today because of the licensing. But in the near future I don’t see them doing desktops in-house anymore. Most will be delivered by their last mile cloud provider.

Martijnl – Read the M$ link I provided on VECD license policy. You are actually incorrect. You can’t virtualize XP legally without VECD licensing or the fully packaged product (XP or Vista). I think the confusion is that you actually need a Vista VECD license in order to virtualize XP legally.

Thanks for the comments!

By: Sven Huisman

Sven Huisman — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:49:37 +0000

Thanks for the little research. I posted a link to this article on my blog.

By: martijnl

martijnl — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:23:18 +0000

It’s one of the reasons to keep using Windows XP in virtual desktops. Usually the company is already covered for the workstations (provided you use thin clients the actual amount of Windows licenses needed does not change because of virtualization).

There also a gotcha with SQL Server that I thought did not exist but a client of mine that was already running SQL Server in their virtualized environment got a bill for SQL Server CPU licenses for every node in the cluster regardless of the fact that it is running a VM with SQL Server or not. This is common practice for Oracle (and I got in trouble for publishing about it) but I didn’t know that Microsoft did the same thing for SQL Server.

By: VDI and licensing | Virtualfuture.info

VDI and licensing | Virtualfuture.info — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:06:23 +0000

[...] Sean Clark did a little investigation on licensing a virtual desktop with XP or Vista. It appears you need Vista licensed with software assurance to be able to run a virtualized desktop, even if it is XP you want to deploy in your VDI-environment. This is very interesting and could be a show-stopper for SMB. I was not aware of this and perhaps a lot of people aren’t. So go to Sean’s blog and read the article. [...]

By: rbrambley

rbrambley — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:22:13 +0000

Thanks for the reclarification. It should be interesting now that more and more SMBs start to adopt virtualization and explore VDI solutions. Microsoft seems to be adjusting it’s policies too now that they have VDI products as well. This may all change … again!

By: Matt McSpirit

Matt McSpirit — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:21:15 +0000

Hi Sean,

Just a quick one – VECD is also available as a separate SKU for Thin Client devices and this doesn’t require SA. You just buy the device, then buy a VECD licence for that device. It’s more expensive than VECD for SA, but doesn’t have the SA requirement (it actually includes SA).

I’m not saying this will ’soften the blow’ drastically, but it’s worth knowing. Also, the great thing is, is that feedback to Microsoft about it’s licensing can bring changes – the Windows Server 2008 CAL change was a direct result of feedback from the field.

Hope that helps,
Matt