Hi all,

I have 6 physical servers which I want to move to Hyper-V 2 node cluster (each 2 CPU). Hyper-V nodes will run on Windows 2012 R2 Standard edition. All 6 physical servers are already licensed (2003 and 2008 servers).

My questions:

1. Do I need to licence servers again when they are moved to virtual environment? What is the best way/tool to do it?

2. I want to install additional Windows 2012R2 server as new virtual server on Hyper-V. Is this covered with Standard license which is used for Hyper-V? As far as I know I should be able to run 2 addiotional VM's (VOSE) on Hyper-V with Standard license.

3. Windows 2012 R2 Standard licence covers 2 CPU and 2 VOSE. I know (think) that if I want to run 6 VM's on 2 node Hyper-V cluster I need to have 3 Windows Server standard licence for each host. Am I right? But my scenario is that I already have licenced physical server and want to move them to Hyper-V 2 node cluster?

I think I do not need any additional license if I want to run them on single node Hyper-V. But what if it's 2 node cluster - my scenario?  

4. Am I able to use live migration in this scenario? I have shared storage. Do I need anything else?

Thanks

Tomas

Licenses are legal agreements between you and Microsoft.  You should always consult with a trained Microsoft licensing specialist from the reseller from whom you purchased your server or from Microsoft itself (www.microsoft.com/licensing).  Free legal advice from anonymous technical posters is not something that your lawyers/auditors are likely to look favorably upon.

That said, if you read Microsoft's published documentation (e.g. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/product-licensing/virtualization.aspx) you will find that Microsoft licenses to the physical processor.  Depending upon the type of licensed purchased, you may or may not be able to move the existing licenses to new systems.  For example, OEM licenses are generally non-transferable.  Machines need to be licensed for the maximum number of operating systems instances that may run on that node.  So six virtual machines running on a two-node Standard Edition cluster would require three Standard Edition licenses assigned to each node of the cluster.

Remember, free advice from this forum is not admissible in a court o

Hi Sir,

Is there any update ?

Best Regards,

Elton Ji