Hi all, Apologies if this has been answered elswhere,but just got a query to clear up. I know that Datacenter R2 has 1 physical plus unlimited virtual licening, but, does this mean that you can only have unlimited virtual servers on the physical datacenter box? The situation I have is we have been told that for the 3 esx boxes we're about to purchase, all we need is 3 datacenter licenses and that this will cover unlimited virtual server licenses on each esx box. Can anyone confirm this for me please? Regards, Paul

Hi Army_23 The best explanation i have found so far is at this link. http://blogs.technet.com/b/mattmcspirit/archive/2008/11/13/licensing-windows-server-in-a-virtual-environment.aspx But data centre licenses are per physical processor. Follow the link and its all explained very well.

Hello, the statement is correct, each physical machine running ESX with Datacenter edition require 1 license for each processor on the physical machine. Then you can run unlimited VMs on this one. So in your case the minimum of 3 Datacenter edition licenses are required. Depends on the physical processors. http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/virtualization.aspx#tab=3 Best regards Meinolf Weber Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.