Simplified Licensing in System Center 2012

Yesterday, Microsoft announced System Center 2012.

I am pleased to see that licensing has been greatly simplified in System Center 2012 without compromising on value and by increasing scalability – more power to the customer!

System Center 2012 maximizes your private cloud value while simplifying purchasing. This is achieved by:

• Private Cloud Value – Maximizing cloud capacity with unlimited virtualization
• Simple Licensing – Delivering a consistent, easy-to-manage model
• Consistent Capabilities – Every license includes all private cloud features.

The licensing changes at a glance:

• No more console licenses. Console licenses (with SQL Runtime) are included with the System Center Standard or Datacenter licenses.
• No more standalone server management licenses.
• Both the Standard and the Datacenter licenses include server management licenses for all 8 System Center components. The 8 components are:
• Operations Manager
• Configuration Manager
• Data Protection Manager
• Service Manager
• Virtual Machine Manager
• Orchestrator (formerly Opalis)
• Endpoint Protection (formerly Forefront Endpoint Protection)
• App Controller (new product)

• Both Standard & Datacenter Edition are on a processor-based model. Each single System Center license (Standard or Datacenter) covers 2 processors on the host machine.
• Standard Edition allows a maximum of 2 Operating System Environments (OSEs)
• Datacenter Edition allows unlimited OSEs.
• A single license cannot be ‘split’ between multiple hosts. (Example: A single Standard Edition license which supports 2 processors cannot be ‘split’ between two 1-processor servers)
• Software Assurance is included with all licenses.
• Client Management licenses are still required for client machines being managed by System Center (non-Server OSEs).

Here are some licensing examples based on the new scheme:

Shijaz Abdulla is a Partner Technology Advisor at Microsoft, helping their top tier partners build on their Microsoft practice. He is also a trusted advisor to medium enterprise customers in Qatar. He is a blogger, tech enthusiast, and a Microsoft evangelist.

Follow him on Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Website