Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter Licensing Changes for Virtualization

Announced to day at the World Wide Partner Conference, Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter Edition (DCE) has undergone some revisions effective from 1st October 2006:

• It will be available through Volume Licensing
• License rights allow an unlimited number of virtualized Windows Server instances, whether that be Windows Server Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter Edition, or a mix of the tree without having to track the number of VMs or pay for additional Windows Server licenses. You simply license the server's processors with Windows Server Datacenter Edition.
• More OEMs will be providing DCE pre-installed on servers with 2 to 64 processors with and without the Datacenter High Availability program.

Cheers,
John.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  PingBack from https://www.mcseboard.de/windows-forum-ms-backoffice-31/serverumstellung-2003-sbs-datacenteredition-118165.html#post732628

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  As you may have seen by now (John got there before me again!), Windows Server 2003 Datacenter...

• Anonymous
  October 05, 2006
  What's needed now is to cap the pricing of SQL Server 2005 at 8 CPU sockets per installation .... that would take the wind out of the sails of non MS DBs and non Intel/AMD CPU architectures ....