RE: [Xen-users] Xen License

["James Harper" <james.harper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 
> My understanding is you can buy SPLA licenses per user or per cpu as
> normal for use in a virtual environment. The only oddity is per CPU
> licenses must license for all cpus in the Xen box regardless of if the
> VM is pinned to less physical CPUs.
> 

I've just browsed the Jan 2010 Services Provider Use Rights document,
and it fairly clearly says that you only need to license the number of
processors for a virtual machine that you assign to it (rounding up). So
if you have 4 quad core processors you can allocate 1-4 cores and pay a
single Processor license for the DomU, 5-8 cores and pay 2 x Processor
licenses, etc. I don't think you even need to bother presenting the
cores as cores of the same physical processor as long as you stay within
the spirit of the agreement.

Alternatively, with Enterprise editions of the software, you can pay 4 x
Processor licenses on a 4 x processor machine and run unlimited virtual
machines, which makes sense as at any given time you can't possibly be
using more than 4 processors.

The latest version of the document can be found from
http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/DocumentSearch.aspx?Mo
de=3&DocumentTypeId=2, I assume that the later version doesn't change
the above but I haven't read it yet.

James

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