Skip to content

Licensing Windows Server Containers

Organizations might choose to deploy apps in containers rather than virtual machines so let’s take a look at the licensing of Windows Server Containers, and Microsoft define two types of containers in the Product Terms. Firstly, there’s a Windows Server…

Read more

Licensing individual virtual machines

Let’s now see how the licensing changes for Blacken White Solicitors when they choose to license by virtual machine rather than by physical server. For comparative purposes, let’s just remind ourselves how many licenses were required in the last section…

Read more

Licensing the physical server

If you choose to license a server farm by physical server, Windows Server Core licenses need to be assigned to cover the physical server, and in this example Blacken White Solicitors could choose to purchase either 2 x 16 =…

Read more

Licensing a server farm

So far we’ve just used one physical server in our scenarios as we’ve learned about the licensing of Windows Server 2025. In reality, of course, organizations will have several or many servers within their server farm. The diagram below shows…

Read more

Licensing individual virtual machines 

Customers with active Software Assurance on their Windows Server 2025 Standard or Datacenter Core licenses (or with licenses acquired as Software Subscriptions through CSP) have a choice as to how they license Windows Server virtual machines. They can either license…

Read more

Licensing VMs by physical server

The Cobalt Bolt Company have a physical server with 2 x 16-core processors on which 6 virtual machines need to be run: As we look at their options for licensing this server, let’s start with the Datacenter edition; you need…

Read more

Licensing virtual machines

Let’s take a look at how the licensing for Windows Server 2025 works in a virtualized environment by considering The Cobalt Bolt Company’s physical server with 2 x 16-core processors on which 6 virtual machines need to be run: Up…

Read more

Licensing external users

For Windows Server 2025, 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…

Read more

Per Server mode

There’s an alternative way to use CALs and that’s to assign them to a specific server rather than to specific users or devices. For example, if you had a particular server and assigned 100 User CALs to it then 100…

Read more

Client Access Licenses

Any clients accessing the services of the server need to be licensed with a Client Access License (a CAL) or with a license designated as being equivalent to a CAL. CALs are available in two types for most products –…

Read more