Chris and Daves SharePoint and Tech Blog

 As I have said I previous posts myself and Alan Richards have been giving a series of presentations on SharePoint 2010 and virtualization, this is an ever evolving presentation thanks to questions we get asked and one of those questions was the licencing model for HyperV so I thought that through this post I would explain the licencing of your Guest Windows servers OS’s on HyperV and the different licencing options you are presented with depending on the host version of Windows that you choose to run your HyperV environment on.

 As I stated in a previous post on licencing SharePoint 2010 for education in the UK the subject of Microsoft licencing is always a lively discussion and so it proved with that particular post but from the research I have done I think the licencing model for HyperV is pretty cut and dried (Well let’s hope so.)

Windows Server 2008 Standard

 This version provides you with a single free licence for your HyperV guest windows server operating system.

Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition

 The enterprise edition of Server 2008 allows you to run 4 guest Windows server instances free from additional licence costs.

Windows Server 2008 Datacentre Edition

 With the Datacentre version the licencing model for the host is slightly different in as much as this version is licenced per processor (Not cores but physical platters) so a single quad core processor would only require 1 Datacentre licence but does provide the best value for large HyperV environments, as this version of Windows server provides you with unlimited licences for your guest Windows server operating systems. The Datacentre version was at one point only available as an OEM product when purchased with hardware but that changed in October 2006 and is now available through your normal licencing channel.

 I have provided below a simple table to help with your decisions on which version of Windows server to run in your host HyperV setup.

As you may know last week I gave a presentation at Microsoft Reading as part of a series of events showcasing SharePoint 2010, one of the slides in the deck was on the thorny subject of licencing prices, now I know from past experience that this is always a shall we say “lively” subject and I am also aware from the consultancy visits we have done over the past couple of years one of the most confusing and troublesome areas when it comes to making the decision to rollout SharePoint in an education establishment. So I thought I would be brave (Some would say fool hardy) and write this article on education prices for SharePoint 2010 in the UK and I hope that this goes someway to helping people decide and also clears up some confusion that seems to exist in the licencing world.

  I would also be very interested in hearing about education prices for this product worldwide so that I can update this post with more information and hopefully create a one stop shop before people plunge into the murky world of SharePoint licencing so any info gratefully received please comment or email me at dave@sharepointedutech.com .

 So here goes (Deep Breath) all of these prices I have gathered from the Ramesys website here there are of course many licence resellers available but the Ramesys site was the easiest to find the product details.

 You will require a SharePoint server licence which retails at £560.12 you then get a choice of device CALS or user CALS you DO NOT need both user CALS for adult or members of staff are £11.95 each and for your students that are going to use SharePoint £0.89p each, device CALS are also £11.95 each, another common misconception for schools is the need to purchase the internet connector licence this sells for between £4500 and £5000 and is another component that is not required by schools, Ray Fleming from Microsoft has also written a blog post to cover this and included a link to a document that covers the exemption of schools for the need of the internet connector licence here

 Also covered by your schools SharePoint licencing is parent logins these parents/guardians do not require user CALS and are covered by this letter from Microsoft here

So to summarise I have created a table of licencing for a fictitious school with 1000 pupils and 150 staff.

 There are also many ways to licence your school with Microsoft products including the Schools agreement or Campus agreement all of the prices I have shown here are based on perpetual select licence prices. More details can also be found at Ray’s blog post on SharePoint licencing here

A quick update:- Some questions where asked today via twitter about hosting a website on SharePoint and the internet connector licence well Ray Fleming came to the rescue with this information “You don’t need an external connector for a SharePoint school website unless people login. It’s fine for anonymous”

Todays Update (20/5/2010)

After looking into this a little more, it seems that a few things have changed with SharePoint 2010 licensing. As that’s just been released, I’m going to look into the changes, and then I’ll let you know how it affects this summary Dave.

I appreciate you taking the time to describe this simply, because I am sure there are lots of schools with similar questions up and down the country.

Ray