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Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista, Small Business Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 Standard edition R2, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise edition R2 and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter edition R2 are all treated differently by Microsoft when it comes to virtualization licensing. Matt McSpirit, Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist
explained what are the licensing requirements for each variant of the Windows client and server operating systems. Customers have to understand the limitations associated with Windows virtualization in order to plan and assess their resources.
For each version of Windows XP professional, deployed as either a physical host, or a guest operating system inside a virtual machine the user will require a separate license. The things are a tad different for Windows Vista acquired via Software Assurance. "Home Basic and Home Premium come with no virtualisation licensing configurations, so let's nip past those. Looking at Vista Business, again, without SA, I'm afraid it's 1 licence per install, regardless of it being in a VM or not, however, looking at the right hand column, you can see that you can have up to 4 VM's installed on that physical host. If you have Vista Business with SA, you can upgrade to Vista Enterprise for free anyway (plus get things like BitLocker!) and take advantage of the 4 VM's, however if you choose to stay with Vista Business, you can't take advantage of the 4 VM's," McSpirit revealed.
SBS 2003 and Server 2003 Standard are very similar to Windows XP from a virtualization perspective, in the sense that the operating systems require separate licenses when installed as either host or guest operating systems. "Moving to Enterprise, you obviously need the licence on the physical box, but, similar to Vista Enterprise, this gives you the option to run up to 4 Windows Server VM's. That gets even better with Datacenter edition. Although you need a licence per physical processor, which could get expensive, you don't need any more licenses for your virtual machines, so essentially, you could save a fortune with this method, and consolidate your infrastructure," McSpirit added.
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