On the other hand, if you are optimizing your hardware with stacked Standard edition licenses in mind, would you come to a different conclusion? If you have more processors per server and a lower core count per processor, how does that change the outcome? Example: A server with 4 dual core processors-8 cores. Considering the cost of a Standard edition license is $882, does it make sense to stack licenses? To cover just the low end of 12 VMs per server in my prior example, you would need 6 Standard edition licenses at a cost of $882 *6 = $5,292 that exceeds the Datacenter edition cost by 10%. 1 A Standard edition license allows only 2 VMs per license, but you can stack The cost per VM in this scenario therefore ranges from $401 down to $60, considering a Datacenter edition license cost of $4809.

If the server has 2 processors that will be covered by 1 Datacenter license, then there can be 12-80 VMs per server.

If 1-4 VMs are assigned per core, that gives a range of 6-40 VMs per processor. The number of VMs that can be effectively run (performance wise) is limited by the number of cores. Optimization of Datacenter licenses is achieved by maximizing the number of cores and minimizing the number of processor pairs (2 at a time).Īs an example, the Intel E7-88xx/48xx/28xx processors support 6-10 cores depending on the model. But Windows Server 2012 is licensed per processor. Modern processors have multiple cores per processor and licensing often follows the number of cores, such as for Microsoft SQL Server 2012. From a financial point of view, are there any conditions that would make stacked 2 Standard edition licenses more attractive than Datacenter licenses? The virtual machine rights are quite different for each edition, where Windows Server 2012 can only be running in 2 VMs for Standard edition, compared to an unlimited number of VMs for a Datacenter edition license. All processors in a server must be covered by licenses and no mixing of editions is allowed. A license covers 2 processors, regardless of the number of cores per processor or the clock rate of the processor. Standard is about 18.3% of the Datacenter edition cost 1. Windows Server 2012, which was rolled out in September, has 4 editions, with 2 editions focused on virtualization-Standard and Datacenter.

Flexera One Cloud Cost Optimization Overview.

Flexera One Cloud Migration and Modernization Overview.

Flexera One IT Asset Management Overview.

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