Software Licensing: Licenses for virtual servers

[bmarks]

Anyone have any idea of the best way to handle guest server licenses? They are being counted in the audit report but they are mainly covered by the host license. They may not be the same version as the host, so adding them to the license count on the order record for the host OS is not going to help clarify things.

Does anyone put fake orders on to cover them or is the accepted practice to provide the 'Hyper-V: Virtual Guest Machines' report as a supplement to an Audit report to cover off the negatives.

Speaking of which, can the purchase orders be optionally reported on the 'License Compliance' report?

thanks

[bmarks]

That's a good shout. We use a mix of OS's on hosts. we also add additional guests for which we will have purchased additional licenses. The license key is probably the thing that should keep all this straight. I will investigate the keys used and how they affect the license counts.

Brian

[fireside-rich]

Can you clarify your host licensing? Remember that Windows Server Datacenter (at least as of 2012 R2) is the only edition that allows for unlimited guests. Win Server Enterprise allows for only four free guests per host, and Win Server Standard allows for only *one* free guest per host.

But most importantly, which license keys are you using on your guests? You should make sure that if you are indeed trying to take advantage of the appropriate free hyper-v guest licensing, that you license each guest with the appropriate AVMA license keys:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn303421(v=ws.11).aspx

My *guess* is that lansweeper will not count AVMA keys the same way it counts regular MAK/KMS keys.