MS Licensing with replication

[benglish]

A quick question, I am using VEEAM replication to replicate my Windows servers off site. Most of the time the replicas are turned off waiting for disaster to strike, but occaisonally they get powered up for testing and peace of mind. The question is do I need to supply an MS license for the replicas in this situation?

Thank You

[dellock6]

MS licensing on virtual environment always talked about RUNNING an instance of Microsoft Windows, so technically when you run dry-tests you are running the same VM twice. I talked with a MS sales rep and they basically told me this (it was for VMware SRM but you can apply it to Veeam also):
if you have enterprise agreement or at least Software Assurance, you do not need additional licenses for DR machines. If you have select/open (does not matter if windows is standard/enterprise/datacenter), than you have to buy additional licenses for DR, even if you use them only to do few tests.

Need to find the doc stating this between all the papers I have, but I remember this for sure...

[Gostev]

Yes indeed, there is a document from Microsoft that explicitly allows performing disaster recovery testing without requiring extra licenses. I will look around for it. This obviously has been a common question from our customers when we introduced our SureBackup technology in 2010, so I had to research on this. Thanks!

[Gostev]

Here, took me much Googling, but I have found it!
Cold Server Backup for Disaster Recovery

a) The back-up server on which the software is run must be turned off except for:
i. Limited disaster-recovery testing of and patch management on the software;

[dellock6]

Uhm, this sounds really different from what MS sales rep told me, but definitively more positive than what I've known before.
I'll pick this doc and show it back to MS guys to clarify, you cannot really say a final word with them

Thanks Anton for the doc!

[dellock6]

Hi Anton,
I read the document. It states cold backup servers are free to be powered on IF you have Software Assurance. So what I heard from MS is not in conflict with this doc, they are describing two different licensing scenarios.

Luca.

[Gostev]

Yep, another reason to get Software Assurance! Although I cannot imagine how any Windows-heavy shop can live without one anyway especially when we are talking about "proper" IT shop with DR sites, SLAs requiring them to do replication, etc.

[pdegroot]

You may not need Windows Server licenses for every server if you only run these servers occasionally and never at the same time. The reason is that you only need to license servers that are running. Servers that are turned off do not need licenses. Another issue, particularly for Windows Server, is that you cannot transfer licenses between servers less than every 90 days.
So imagine a scenario in which you have 12 backup servers offsite, with Windows Server installed. You purchase 6 Windows Server licenses. Every quarter, you start 6 machines up and test, patch them, etc. As soon as the first 6 are done, you turn them off and repeat this with the other 6. Since you have just transferred your 6 licenses to those machines, the licenses are stuck there for 90 days. 91 days later, you repeat the process. (Many variations on this. fire up 2 machines every month and you'll always have transferable licenses, for example)
This isn't pretty, and if the reason that you have the 12 backups is that you may need them all at once some time, it will be problematic, because you wouldn't have enough licenses for all of them simultaneously.
However, keep in mind: if the reason the backups are running in that case is that regular production machines are out of service, every production machine that is out of service has a Windows license that you can transfer to a backup server.

Paul DeGroot
Principal Consultant
Pica Communications
"Solving the Microsoft Licensing Puzzle"

[dellock6]

The question anyway was slightly different: what happens when someone fires up a backup server WHILE its own production copy is already running?
Document posted by Anton explains it really well, assumed customer has Software Assurance.

Luca.

[pdegroot]

And if the customer doesn't have SA, they are out of luck. You can only purchase SA at the time you purchase a new license, so if they don't have SA, they'll need to buy new licenses and if they do, they don't need SA because they'll have the extra licenses. Funny the way that works.
But benglish could help us all a lot by telling us if they have SA on the servers, because you're right, it makes a big difference.

[dellock6]

Another question coming to my mind: what about licensing if a customer sends its backups/replica to a remote site managed by a provider with its own SPLA microsoft licences? We have our own VMware clusters with ESXi and MS SPLA licenses for the windows servers we power on on top of our servers, but what if those VMs are coming from a replica of customers' VMs?
Do our licenses cover the customers' cold backup servers?

[Vitaliy S.]

Since those VMs still belong to the customer, I don't think that SP's license agreement would cover this situation.

[dellock6]

That was my idea too. Since Paul DeGroot seemed someway expert on this topic, maybe he (or someone else) has a link to an official position by microsoft.

Luca.

[pdegroot]

If I understand the scenario the customer ships VMs with Windows Server as the guest OS to a service provider who has signed an SPLA. Could the service provider fire up the customer's VMs under the SPLA license?
I don't think there's an official MS position on this, but there are some very close scenarios. Overall, I'd say no, but, if you're willing to read a long-winded scenario, this does open the door to a legal and possibly superior DR infrastructure.
This would use the new License Mobility for SA right, which lets a customer ships licenses to a hoster, who can then run them. Only a few products can be handled this way, and Windows Server is not one of them. So the customer must always pay the hoster to rent the Windows Server licenses, although other other products, like SQL Server, can run with the customer's licenses.
The first technical obstacle you run into here is how can I ship the hoster a VM running all my software, if I can't put Windows server in the VM? My reading of the License Mobility for SA right doesn't offer any help here, such as an exception for Windows server. Besides that, there's a big catch: all licenses hosted by the SPLA provider must have SA on them, and that's the problem we're trying to work around. The way the License Mobility for SA right works, the hoster always provides the Windows Server licenses (and the customer pays the hoster a monthly fee for that), while the rest of the licenses that make up the system have been purchased by and are owned by the customer.
However, there are scenarios where having a hoster handle your system backups could actually be a useful scenario. It would work something like this.
You arrange for a hoster to rent you however many CPUs you need for your DR servers. (This decision may not need to be made at the start. You can decide later how many CPUs you really need.) The hoster provides the Windows OS and the hardware, for which you get charged on a monthly basis. You transfer any other licenses required for the solution (e.g., SQL Server, System Center Ops Management Server, etc.) from your own inventory of licenses. The hoster does not charge you a fee for those licenses, since you have already paid Microsoft for them. You then set up the server and software configurations on the hosted VM the way you want them. So now you have a replica that, in the event you needed it, you could fire up on demand. But you keep it turned off so that you don't have to assign licenses to it.
Also, last time I looked, you only pay for the SPLA licenses that you actually use within a given month. So if you never access the server during a month, there's no charge. (Maybe someone with greater SPLA expertise than me can confirm or challenge that.) You would only pay the monthly fee for months in which you fired up your DR image to do some work on it.
You also may be able to make a deal with the SPLA hoster. Because they typically host server VMs on Windows Server Datacenter, they pay a flat fee every month for that. There's a possibility that you could make a deal with the hoster that for $X every year, you'll store your DR servers on their system, but turned off except in the case of a disaster. A good fee might be 25% of the full annual fee you might pay for a full-time server. That 25% happens to span the magical 90 days, which could be useful. You could then periodically fire up the servers for maintenance, but you don't worry about the Windows Server licensing, since they're not your licenses, but the hoster's. (You would, however, have to make sure that you didn't exceed your licensed number of instances for your own licenses, such as SQL Server, running on those servers.)
So the day comes and you have a serious problem that takes out your on-premises data center. You get on the phone to the hoster and ask them to fire up your backups. Because of the disaster, the licenses for any instances that crashed in your own data center are magically and instantly transferred to the hoster's site (as long as you have SA on those licenses). You could be up and running at full tilt within a very short period of time. In the meantime you have not spent money on your own DR site. You haven't paid for real estate that is not in production most of the time, power and cooling for servers that aren't running most of the time, general server management, spare Windows licenses (and maybe not even spare other licenses).
It actually sounds like a really interesting offering for hosters--providing high-availability DR services at lower cost than most customers could do it themselves.
Paul DeGroot
Principal Consultant
Pica Communications
"Solving the Microsoft Licensing Puzzle"

[dellock6]

Hi Paul,
and thanks for this post. I work as a "hoster" and we have SPLA licenses. I checked the SPLA license before replying, and that's what is in it relevant to DR:

D. “Cold” Disaster Recovery Rights. For each instance of eligible server software licensed in the Per Processor licensing model that you run in a physical or virtual operating system environment (or OSE) on a licensed server, you may temporarily run a backup instance in a physical or virtual operating system environment (or OSE) on a server dedicated to disaster recovery. The product use rights for the software and the following limitations apply to your use of software on a disaster recovery server:
• The server must be turned off except for (i) limited software self-testing and patch management, and (ii) disaster recovery.
• The server may not be in the same cluster as the production server.
• You may run the backup and production instances at the same time only while recovering the production instance from a disaster.

So, a hoster can cover licenses if he was already running them, but seems to not cover licenses coming from a customer.
A possible way out at this point could be to rent directly the windows licenses from a SPLA hoster and run them at the customer's site. SPLA licenses are covered by SA and belongs to the hoster, so he can run the VM in his own datacenter. But I'm not sure a SPLA owne can rent license outside of his datacenters.
Need to check on this.

Seems Software Assurance is not avoidable...

Luca.

[Spex]

Has anybody checked, whether you need additional licenses for using surebackup?
Fact is, that during running the vm from backup a second instance of the os and the application is running.

Regards
Spex

[Spex]

I would change the title since it's not only a microsoft problem.
What is e.g. with db2/oracle/sap/... and any other 3rd party software you are starting up in a surebackup session.

[kewnev]

Gees, you'd hope MS would be a bit more reasonable about this .. expect a non-SA customer to purchase whole new licenses just to test a backup? Oh well, I guess there's a reason why they're rich.

[foggy]

What is e.g. with db2/oracle/sap/... and any other 3rd party software you are starting up in a surebackup session.

Stefan, this should be verified with the corresponding software vendors but most likely they stick to the same policy regarding cold backup servers.

[garymansell]

Hi,

I want to replicate an Oracle Server using VEEAM Backup and Replication and use Sure Backup to boot the replicated System to ensure that it starts correctly and is a sound DR copy of my server.

This obviously means that the replicated copy of Oracle needs to be started so that it can be tested - but on a private network where no one can access it.

I am wondering if this will incur an Oracle licensing cost for the replicated host or does the fact that it is only on a private network and not in production mean that an Oracle license for the replicated system is not needed as you would never be running both systems at the same time - only one at a time.

What are people doing in this situation with Oracle licensing?

Rgds

Gary

[rfn]

Hi,

I'm pretty sure that I saw this mentioned way back but I can't find the post and things might have changed since then...

Do any of you know what the rules are regarding Windows licensing when using SureBackup? In our situation we have Windows Server 2012 Datacenter licenses on our productions hosts but not on our DR hosts. We're not really utilizing SureBackup yet, but I have played with it, and I would like it to run on our DR hosts and not our production hosts, but how would Microsoft feel about that when I boot up VM's that aren't licensed on the DR hosts? Is it allowed or is it a violation of the license?

It's not like we would use the VM's for anything since we would just be checking the backups and they're running in a sandboxed environment.

[foggy]

René, I've merged you into the corresponding discussion, please take a look. I don't think something has changed in this sense, however you are free to start discussion anew, if needed.

[rfn]

It was this exact thread that I had seen before and it answers my question: We don't need additional licenses on the DR servers. Perfect!

[larry]

Licensing Brief - Licensing Microsoft Server Products for Use in Virtual Environments

see pdf from Microsoft, I have attached a link.


http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/abou ... nsing.aspx

for SQL 2012 see if you buy 2012 but down grade the 2012 licensing is what is vaild. It is in the doc.

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&q ... 35&bih=850

[gollem]

Do I need a Windows license for the host where I replicate to?


In example, I've got 2 identical servers each equipped with: 1x 12core CPU, 64gb of ram, ESXi standard license

On server 1 I am running 6 vm's all Windows 2016 servers, I've bought 3x a Windows 2016 standard license (those 16 core packs, or are they called 8 dual core packs?), on each 16 core pack I'm allowed to run 2 OSE's (Operating system environments)

Server 2 sits there idle with no running VM's.

In grand total I'm currently owning the following license
2x ESXi license
1x Veeam license
3x Windows 2016 license


I've setup a schedule which replicates the running VM's from server 1 to server 2 every hour during business hours. (after hours we do backups to a local NAS and an offsite datastore)

So technically the servers on Server2 are not powered on, only if server 1 fails we will power them on on server2 (ok, ofcourse we do a DR test and power them on once a quarter or so on an isolated network and turn them off straight after that)

Does anybody know if I officialy require to buy another set of 3x Windows 2016 license or would it be allowed in the described setup?

[NPOrange]

Hi Gollem,

Yes, you do
You have to license your host to as many VMs might run on it. Since it's a backup server, eventually they will, so you have to pay your license tribute.

Yet, there is an exception to that : if you had bought your licences with Microsoft Software Assurance(SA) - or intend to do it in next 90 days after buying your licences, then SA gives the Cold server right, that is exactly what you ask for : the right to run VMs on a 2nd hosts, stopped if not.
But there is two culprits with SA :
* First of all, if you're using Hyper-V and the virtualization host is set up with a standard install (not core), then you have to pay your licence for this very specific hosts, and so, only 2 licenses SAs are needed. If Hyper-V Core installed, then it's ok.
* Last but not least, 1 license+SA is generally more expensive than 2 licences but it brings you SO MANY others WONDERFUL things (Nano servers, MS support, free OS upgrades during SA...)

Hope this helps !