I am trying to find answers to the following questions in regards to Microsoft licensing.

1. Do we need to purchase separate licenses for the Dev and UAT servers? If yes how are these different from the licenses for production.

2. Do we need licences for the DR servers? How would the licensing be different for the Cold DR (DR servers are not in use when production is up and vice-versa), Hot DR (DR servers are up however requests do not hit these servers while prod is working) and stretched farm (all servers are up and serving requests).

3. can the licenses be reused. I mean we apply licenses to say 1 servers and then replace that one with another server and replace the license as well.

4. Does licensing for VM's on Azure remain the same as with on-premise servers or there are additional considerations.

1. You can purchase licensing for these environments at the same cost as the licensing for your production environment. Typically this is very expensive. The alternative is to purchase MSDN licensing for your developers and testers and use MSDN keys on non-production environments. As long as a user has MSDN licensing they can access any MSDN-licensed system.

2. SharePoint licensing is transferable, provided only the number of licensed servers are available at any time. Cold servers (that are turned off or cannot be accessed by users) are suitable for this, provided when you turn it on your production environment is not available. A hot environment would typically require licensing as it's usually on and available when Microsoft does an audit.

3. Yes, you can transfer the license. It's a piece of paper (or a number in a spreadsheet) and isn't tied to any specific server or instance.

4. Licensing for servers in Azure's IaaS offering fall under your regular licensing arrangements.

I had to look into this closely for a clients Development and UAT environments and Jason has that right, MSDN subscriptions are absolutely the way to go for this.

The link below covers the use of MSDN licenses for Dev and UAT environments. Hopefully that and some of the sections I've pulled out below will help you, As always though, refer to a licensing specialist if you have access through a LAR or similar?

Regards

Paul.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13350

In this document, there is a fairly clear discussion on what constitutes a Production, development and test environment.

A production environment is defined as an environment that is accessed by end users of an application (such as an Internet Web site) and that is used for more than Acceptance Testing of that application or Feedback. Some scenarios that constitute production environments include:

•  Environments that connect to a production database.
•  Environments that support disaster-recovery or backup for a production environment.
•  Environments that are used for production at least some of the time, such a server that is rotated into production during peak periods of activity.

Page 15 of the document covers Acceptance Testing in more detail in the section entitled Scenarios in which unlicensed users can use the software

Acceptance Testing (UAT)

At the end of a software development project, end users (or team members such as a business sponsor or product manager acting as proxies for end users, particularly in cases where its infeasible or impossible for the actual end users of the program to participate) typically review an application and determine whether it meets the necessary criteria for releasea process often called user acceptance testing or UAT.The software may be accessed by end users who do not have an MSDN subscription for purposes of acceptance testing, provided that the use of the software otherwise complies with all MSDN licensing terms.  It is rare that someone whose primary role is designing, developing, or testing the software would also qualify as an end user.

Acceptance testing must not use live production data. If a copy of any live production data is used, then that copy of the data must be discarded after the testing is complete and cannot be incorporated back into the live production data.

Yes, that is my understanding. With an MSDN subscription you are licensed to access any other MSDN environment that is built with software and editions available in your subscription.

For a final "answer" on this I recommend contacting your local MSDN Subscription service center.

1. You can purchase licensing for these environments at the same cost as the licensing for your production environment. Typically this is very expensive. The alternative is to purchase MSDN licensing for your developers and testers and use MSDN keys on non-production environments. As long as a user has MSDN licensing they can access any MSDN-licensed system.

2. SharePoint licensing is transferable, provided only the number of licensed servers are available at any time. Cold servers (that are turned off or cannot be accessed by users) are suitable for this, provided when you turn it on your production environment is not available. A hot environment would typically require licensing as it's usually on and available when Microsoft does an audit.

3. Yes, you can transfer the license. It's a piece of paper (or a number in a spreadsheet) and isn't tied to any specific server or instance.

4. Licensing for servers in Azure's IaaS offering fall under your regular licensing arrange