Earlier this week, a Microsoft spokesperson said the company will announce licensing changes with regards to server virtualization next Tuesday. Indeed, current Microsoft licensing rules have been problematic for proponents of virtualization, in part because software hosted on a virtual server is licensed based on the physical server.
When using technologies such as VMware's VMotion, which is able to shift running virtual machines between physical servers without downtime, each VMotion move is actually considered a license transfer. However, customers are not allowed to make more than one "license transfer" every 90 days, effectively negating much of VMotion's benefits. At the moment, the opinion from analysts is that Microsoft will remove the 90-day restriction.
To learn more Microsoft's licensing policies:
- check out this Network World article [1]
Links:
[1] http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/081308-microsoft-virtual-licensing.html