Microsoft to tweak virtualization licensing policies

In its continuing effort to adjust to the realities of virtualization, Microsoft plans on Tuesday to announce new licensing and support policies to address how software can be used across multiple virtual and physical machines.

The software maker confirmed the planned move to CNET News, but declined to go into details ahead of the Tuesday announcement. However, Network World speculated that the company may ease up on a licensing requirement that ties software in a virtual machine to running on a particular server.

That poses a challenge in a world in which virtualization software, such as that from VMware, allows companies to seamlessly move virtual machines from one physical server to another, based on demand needs.

Although it has had challenges of its own keeping pace with changes in the way server software is run, Microsoft has led the way in some new frontiers of licensing, such as how to deal with multicore processors.

[Penguinisto]

So they finally decided to adapt to such competitive technologies as VMotion? Cool.

Now if only it was open source, or at least open to all platforms (and not just that resource hog Windows).

[bulldoggk]

How is VMotion a competitive technology? And what do you want to see as open source and available to all platforms?

[bj1126]

If they want to be players in the cloud arena as well as the modern data center this is a must for them.

[humanssssss]

I love competition to drive companies like Microsoft to change their licensing because at the end of the day, when consumers have option, they will choose that which is better for them. Not to mention, KVM is open source and free, which I use to deploy for many of my mid-size business clients. Save them a bundle!

The pricing for VMWare license is as much as the cost of a real physical server. Around $800 per license. I haven't looked into Microsoft pricing but I suspect it's a bit cheaper but not as cheap as KVM.

[MMC Racing]

Where can I buy one of these $800 servers!

[Penguinisto]

ESXi is free (which in turn was probably a reaction to Xen, VirtualBox, KVM, etc...)

[gp2792]

$28 bucks for a hyper v license...

[idfubar]

What are the odds Microsoft announces a provision to allow virtualization of OEM-licensed Microsoft software? Why should I need a retail license to virtualize my old home computer when the hardware becomes obsolete? I didn't tell the developers of Windows 2000 software to tie their data to their applications!!!