Looks like a new conditional set that gets you out of licensing if you have a replica site used purely for failover.

From this we are under the impression that the replica server holding the replicated VM’s is NOT required to be licensed so long as the stated conditions are met

January 2015 PUR (pg. 69 of 81)

Servers — Disaster Recovery Rights

• Other than backup instances run on Microsoft Azure Services, Windows Server license is not required for the disaster recovery server if the following conditions are met:
• The Hyper-V role within Windows Server is used to replicate virtual OSEs from the production server at a primary site to a disaster recovery server.
• The disaster recovery server may be used only to
• run hardware virtualization software, such as Hyper-V,
• provide hardware virtualization services,
• run software agents to manage the hardware virtualization software,
• serve as a destination for replication,
• receive replicated virtual OSEs, test failover, and
• await failover of the virtual OSEs.
• run disaster recovery workloads as described above
• The disaster recovery server may not be used as a production server.

What are your thoughts ?

Thanks Martin

From this we are under the impression that the replica server holding the replicated VM’s is NOT required to be licensed so long as the stated conditions are met

January 2015 PUR (pg. 69 of 81)

Servers — Disaster Recovery Rights

• Other than backup instances run on Microsoft Azure Services, Windows Server license is not required for the disaster recovery server if the following conditions are met:
• The Hyper-V role within Windows Server is used to replicate virtual OSEs from the production server at a primary site to a disaster recovery server.
• The disaster recovery server may be used only to
• run hardware virtualization software, such as Hyper-V,
• provide hardware virtualization services,
• run software agents to manage the hardware virtualization software,
• serve as a destination for replication,
• receive replicated virtual OSEs, test failover, and
• await failover of the virtual OSEs.
• run disaster recovery workloads as described above
• The disaster recovery server may not be used as a production server.

What are your thoughts ?

Thanks Martin

I have to take the “out” here that SPLA licensing might be different in this regard because I haven’t looked very closely at what, if anything, makes it different from volume/retail. However, for both volume and retail, the mere existence of the Replica requires it to be licensed. This is because it is not a backup, no matter how you use it. It is a virtual machine that is in a standby mode, somewhere between powered off and powered on. It’s not a “backup” because Replicas aren’t restored, they’re just turned on.
This situation is mentioned specifically in the Product Use Rights document as being a privilege granted by Software Assurance. In other cases, you need a full license to cover the Replicas. My instincts tell me that your software provider is wrong and that you should seek a second opinion. In this regard, I would probably seek guidance from Microsoft’s licensing team directly.

Here comes the real deal: We NEVER run the replicas on the secondary host. We only store the replicated content of the associated VHDX files. In order to test the replicas from time to time, we run them on the primary host, where we have the datacenter license.

So in fact, in our case the replica feature is only used for backup, VMs are never loaded into RAM. If we would need to failover, then of course loading the VMs into RAM on the secondary host would mean that we would need to pay the monthly license in our case as SPLA providers.

Microsoft states clearly, that storage is out of their licensing scope, no matter what kind of licensing you’re on.

Our software provider had a hard time to figure the right answer to this but finally came up with one. They say that we don’t need licenses for the secondary host for these replicated VMs, as long as they are never loaded into RAM.

How is your view on this?

Thanks
Juri

Here comes the real deal: We NEVER run the replicas on the secondary host. We only store the replicated content of the associated VHDX files. In order to test the replicas from time to time, we run them on the primary host, where we have the datacenter license.

So in fact, in our case the replica feature is only used for backup, VMs are never loaded into RAM. If we would need to failover, then of course loading the VMs into RAM on the secondary host would mean that we would need to pay the monthly license in our case as SPLA providers.

Microsoft states clearly, that storage is out of their licensing scope, no matter what kind of licensing you’re on.

Our software provider had a hard time to figure the right answer to this but finally came up with one. They say that we don’t need licenses for the secondary host for these replicated VMs, as long as they are never loaded into RAM.

How is your view on this?

Thanks
Juri

If each one of these hosts has 2 physical CPUs and its own Datacenter license, you can run all the live and replica VMs of Windows Server on them that you want.