Hosters Guide to Microsoft Licensing..

Authenticated vs. Unauthenticated
There is a simple distinction between authenticated and unauthenticated, if a server is authenticated, that means it is using Active Directory. Active Directory is the system of centralised user control in Windows. You do not need Active Directory to run windows, but certain systems require AD, these will be covered in this sheet. The most common are:
• Windows Clustering
• Microsoft Exchange
• Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (Not Sharepoint Services 3.0)
• A cluster of terminal servers
• A domain controller
The following words indicate this is an authenticated environment:
• “In a domain”
• “Active Directory”
• “Not in a workgroup”
• “On AD”
The customer might say the following to indicate this is unauthenticated:
• “In a workgroup environment”

SAL or CAL
• A SAL is a ‘Subscriber access license’; it is the SPLA version of the CAL.
• 1 Windows Standard SAL will grant a user access to all authenticated servers in a hosted platform, for example:
This solution has 5 users
It also has 3 servers (Terminal Server, Domain Controller and Exchange Server) which are all authenticated
The licensing required for this solution is:

5x Windows Standard SAL
5x Terminal Server SAL
5x Exchange SAL

Those SAL’s grant those 5 users access to all 3 servers, regardless of number of processors.
If you added another Domain Controller for example, you would not need extra SALs.

Exchange
Exchange is a system allowing Calendaring, Email, Shared folders. Exchange has the following requirements:
1. You must have an Exchange SAL for each user using Exchange. There is no ‘unlimited’ license.
2. Every Exchange Server MUST be authenticated, Exchange requires Active Directory to operate
3. Because it requires AD, you need both an Exchange SAL AND a Windows SAL.
4. 1 Exchange SAL licenses every Exchange server in that setup.
This example has 10 users, 3 Exchange Servers and 1 Domain controller, you need the following licenses:
• 10x Exchange SAL (Ask customer which version)
• 10x Windows STD SAL

Windows Server 2008 Web Edition
In web edition you can do everything the full version allows, except:
• It must be web facing
• It cannot be a domain controller
• It cannot be a DNS server
• It cannot run Hyper-V
• It cannot be a terminal server

Terminal Services
1. Terminal Services does NOT need to be on an authenticated license
2. It is recommended that for more than 1 terminal server, you use Active Directory.

SQL Server
SQL Server does not need to run on a domain, unless it is in a cluster.
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/editions-compare.aspx

Clustering
1. Clustering requires Active Directory to run
2. You only need to license the active SQL Server license, say you have 2 SQL Servers in a cluster, you do not need 2 SQL Licenses.
3. You do need to license the Windows License on both nodes.
4. Do NOT run a cluster node as a domain controller as well, or EVER allow a customer to do this. We will not support a solution with this setup.

This solution powers a web site, I have left the web servers out for simplicity.
The Customer does not know how many users will be accessing the website because this is a public site, there are 2 Servers in a cluster providing SQL.
You will need the following licenses:
• 1x Windows Std Proc (Domain Controller)
• 2x Windows Enterprise Proc (Cluster Nodes)
• 1x SQL Server (Standard or Enterprise) License

Domain Controllers
A domain controller is the server that contains a database on the users in the system, if this server fails, any software requiring logins in a domain will fail.
If any of the servers in a solution require Active Directory, there must be a domain controller in the solution. It is important to remember that if the solution only has 1 domain controller; this becomes a single point of failure, so if possible provide 2 domain controllers, especially if the customer is requesting NO single point of failure.
A Domain Controller needs at least 512MB RAM, so it can be a small spec machine.
If you are trying to keep the costs low, you can make both domain controllers virtual machines, speak to any of the Solutions Architects on this.
Virtualisation
For Virtual Guests (ie: the Virtual Machines, not the physical servers) once you license the host, there are a certain number of included licenses for Windows,

Standard Authenticated (1 Web or Standard VM)
Enterprise Authenticated (4 Web, Standard or Enterprise VM's)
Datacenter Unauthenticated (Unlimited Unauthenticated Web,Standard,Enterprise or Datacenter VMs)

Also for SQL Server, there are benefits, if you license the host with Enterprise Edition SQL, any Virtual Machines on that host do not need SQL Licenses.