Introducing the .NET in the Windows .NET Server 2003 Family

Microsoft Processor Server Licensing

In a Server/CAL arrangement the Server licence covers the physical server regardless of how powerful it is. The proportionality in the pricing (i.e. a larger network costs more to licence than a small one) comes from having to purchase CALs for every client. This can be complicated to manage.

A simple alternative to the Server/CAL arrangement for most Microsoft Server Applications is to purchase Processor licences instead. With per processor licensing CALs are completely removed from the equation and the physical processors in the server are licensed.

With Per Processor Licensing a Processor licence is required for each processor inside a server the software is installed on, however a license is not required for any processor that has been made inaccessible to all operating system copies set up to run the software (e.g., through partitioning).

Different licensing modes for server products

With the recent advances in technology two new processor offerings, hyperthreading and the multicore processor are available. Both are designed to speed up and improve the performance of the server.

Essentially hyperthreading technology fools the operating system into thinking it's hooked up to two processors, allowing two threads to be run in parallel, both on separate 'logical' processors within the same physical processor. The OS sees double through a mix of shared, replicated and partitioned chip resources, such as registers, maths units and cache memory. So if the software thinks that there are two processors working it would be natural to assume that two licences are required and indeed with some software vendors this may be so. However Microsoft processor licences looks at the physical processor and requires that to be licenced.

With the multicore offering two or more processor cores are etched on to a single slice of silicon or die. The new chips are far more powerful than current models and can efficiently handle multiple tasks. This ability however does not change the licensing requirements and a single processor licence is required for each physical die that is in the server.

*Note if the server can be partitioned and the Operating system and a number of processors’

Sandra Woodley V1Page 124/05/2019

Sandra Woodley V1Page 124/05/2019