Licensing external users

For Windows Server 2022, the organization can choose to buy CALs for its external users or the devices they use, but it’s generally more cost-effective to buy an External Connector license. It’s easier to manage too, since an External Connector license is a single license that allows an unlimited number of external users to access a server. It’s assigned to a server which is already licensed with the regular Windows Server Standard or Datacenter Core licenses and there’s just one edition – you don’t need to choose a Standard or Datacenter External Connector license, for example.

The diagram below shows a network infrastructure with three servers, all of which have the required number of Windows Server Core licenses assigned to them. The shaded server at the top also has an External Connector license assigned to it allowing any number of external users to access that single server:

Note that if there were virtual machines running on the server covered by the External Connector license then the external users would be licensed to access any or all of those virtual machines as required.