Mike D’s Blog

As has been reported by Andrew Dugdell and James O’Neill, Microsoft has updated their licensing policy so you don’t need Windows Server 2008 CALs if you’re just running a bunch of Windows 2003 or other non-Windows Server 2008 based VMs.

The issue of needing Windows Server 2008 CALs was first brought to light by the VMware competition team back in mid-December. I also reported on it the next day.

Microsoft has now updated their policy. In a nutshell you no longer need Windows Server 2008 CALs if you’re accessing non-Windows Server 2008 VMs on a host that’s only used for virtualization. Full documents outlining the changes can be found here.

I have to applaud Microsoft for changing things around so quickly. They continue to do a good job changing their licensing to work better with virtualization technologies. Now if we can just get the to concentrate on the desktop side a little and change VECD to be much more economical and allow you to assign VECD and Microsoft Office to users instead of devices.

UPDATE (January 23, 2008) – The VMware competitive team just weighed in with their thoughts on this subject. They pretty much wrote what everyone else did – why this makes sense, this was a good move, etc. However they also wrote about things they’d like to see changed. I’ve pasted that short list below because I’ve heard many customers asking for the same things. Maybe if we all ask together Microsoft might get this message as well.

1) Provide customers an option for all Microsoft OS and application licenses to be assigned to the virtual instance (instead of physical hosts) so customers can take full advantage of VM mobility.
2) Allow third parties (ex. ISVs) to have an ability to distribute demo and production VMDK-based Windows virtual appliances so customers can deploy them in their virtual datacenters.
3) Lift restrictions in VECD where customers must pay a significant premium for virtualized desktops in exchange for “expanded license grants” that they do not necessarily need (or want). Currently, VECD works for a limited number of sophisticated customers, but makes the use of Microsoft products in virtual desktops very expensive for customers seeking simple, uniform deployment of consistent desktop environments.