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How does the licensing of Windows Server Containers work?

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 Container with Hyper-V isolation which, from a licensing perspective, is considered to be a virtual operating system environment and thus follows the licensing rules for virtual machines which are covered in the previous section. Then there’s a Windows Server Container without Hyper-V isolation which is a feature of the Windows Server software itself, and thus a customer may use as…

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What SA benefits do Windows Server Subscriptions in CSP get?

There is no notion of Software Assurance in CSP and these Server Subscriptions don’t come with SA, but they DO come with entitlements to some of the benefits that we would normally refer to as Software Assurance benefits. In particular, they entitle customers to the Azure Hybrid Benefit, Disaster Recovery rights, and to use Semi-Annual Channel releases of Windows Server. In addition, if a new version of Windows Server is released during the term of the Server Subscription, then that may be deployed in the on-premises infrastructure if required. Equally (and this isn’t, I know, an SA benefit) customers may…

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