A General Guide To How Licensing Is Carried Out And In Relation To Virtual Server Hosting
Licensing rules for a virtual server are not uniform and set in stone. The rules are very much dependent on the vendor of the product that is being licensed for use on the servers. Regardless of the lack of set rules, general guidelines can be discussed.
Take for instance Windows virtual servers and specifically Windows Server 2008. You will need a server license but if the server is only being used as a Hyper-V host machine then you do not need to buy client access licenses as well. You can carry out support services like failover clustering on the server but for any applications that aren’t related to virtualization you will need a client access license. If you’re using a server for virtual server hosting and want to have Windows Server 2008 as an OS on any or all of the virtual servers, client access licenses are required.
Having to buy a server license for a host operating system and each guest operating system can be expensive, so Microsoft offers the Windows Server 2008 Enterprise guest operating system at no additional charge if you buy a server license for the host OS if the host is running Hyper-V and Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. Both the host server’s operating system and four virtual servers it hosts are covered by an Enterprise license. Client access licenses are required on a per user basis which means you need a sufficient number to cover all your users but you can add as many Windows virtual servers to a network as you want without needing more licenses. A Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition license is a good option for virtual server hosting because it covers any and all virtual server operating systems you want to host on your host server.
Microsoft allows you to store as many instances of a server and the client software as you want to without needing to buy more licenses. Software instances can be transferred and run on various servers so long as the servers have a license to run the software instances.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server is a useful example to consider in relation to licensing on Linux virtual servers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server requires software subscriptions based on how many virtual guests and socket-pairs there are in each system that installs or utilises Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server. A virtual guest is a term that refers to a software instance which is installed and/or executed on a virtual machine system. Red Hat utilises the GNU General Public License v.2 for its own software components and programs. Sometimes Red Hat will offer third party programs that are separate from their own programs and are not needed in order for their own programs to run. These third party programs have their own license terms which you are obliged to adhere to or otherwise you must not install them.
Regardless of whether you use Windows or Linux virtual servers, always check the individual license terms of software and so forth before installing on the virtual servers.
A general guide to licensing virtual servers. Visit Switch Link. Is there a contrast between licensing for Windows VPS and Linux virtual servers?
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