Welcome to the ITFreeTraining video on Hyper-V licensing with Windows Server. It is important
to understand how licensing works with the different editions of Windows Server to ensure
that you are compliant and understand the requirements.
The first point I would like to make is that your choice of virtualization does not affect
licensing. So, assuming you have purchased licenses for the Windows Server that you are
running, you can use any virtualization solution on the market. This includes non-Microsoft
virtualization solutions.
For example if you have 3 copies of Windows Server running in virtual machines, you could
run these 3 virtual machines using Hyper-V. You could also run them using VMWare or Microsoft
virtual Server. There are a number of virtualization products available on the market and your
choice of which one to use does not affect licensing of Windows Server.
The first edition of Windows that I will look at is DataCenter. If you purchase the Datacenter
edition of Windows Server, you can run an unlimited number of virtual machines running
Datacenter. Essentially this means that when you install the Datacenter edition on a physical
server you are free to run as many virtual machines on that server as you want, only
limited by the hardware of that server. If you install DataCenter edition on each virtual
machine, you will not need to purchase any additional licenses. If you are planning to
run a lot of virtual machines, Datacenter is a good option to reduce your licensing
costs.
The Datacenter license costs a lot more than the other Windows Server licenses and purchasing
hardware that can use a lot of CPU’s and a large amount of RAM is also quite expensive.
It is a matter of the administrator deciding if it is worth the cost, or if buying a few
servers may be a better option.
If you are running Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2 standard edition, this
allows 2 standard editions of Windows Server to be run free of charge. There is, however,
a limitation with this. The only role the can be installed on the physical server is
Hyper-V. The idea behind this is that the physical server should only be used to manage
the virtual machines. For example, you should not be using the physical server for file
sharing or providing additional services for users.
You are not, however, limited to just running Hyper-V for your virtualization solution.
You could also run another virtualization solution. For example, you are free to run
VMWare and, with the one Windows Server edition license, you could run two virtual
machines running Windows Standard Edition on the one physical server. So essentially
running Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2 in a virtual machine gives you 2 for
the price of 1.
If you are running Windows Server Essentials or Windows Server MultiPoint, this allows
1 physical install or 1 virtual machine install. If you install the Essentials or MultiPoint
on a physical server, you are not able to perform any more installs with that license.
However, you could also choose to install Essentials or MuiltPoint on a virtual machine.
So basically one license of either of these products gives you the choice of installing
it on a physical server or a virtual machine.
The last edition of Windows Server I will look at is the Hyper-V edition. So far I have
looked at all the other editions of Windows Server that are shipped with Hyper-V. This
edition contains a slimmed down version of Windows Server. This is essentially Windows
Server Core and is designed to run only the Hyper-V role. It is designed to run virtual
machines and nothing else, but it can be joined to the domain, making it easier to manage.
Since it is only a virtualization solution, Microsoft allows you to download it free of
charge. Using it does give you some advantages. Since it is slimmed down, it has less software
running on the server. This means fewer updates and less software that an attacker could potentially
use. This also means potentially fewer resources used on the server.
It is up to the administrator to decide which they want to go with. If you are planning
on installing Windows Server Standard on a virtual machine using Hyper-V, it may be worth
it for the administrator to use the Standard edition for the Virtualization solution. This
gives them more options later on if they change their mind or their requirements changes.
With Hyper-V, if you need to add features later on, your only choice may be to perform
a re-install of a different edition.
Well that covers it for licensing for Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 and R2. I hope you
have found this video informative and I hope to see you in the other videos from us from
this course and others. Until then thanks for watching and see you next time.