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Paying Attention to Roles Can Pay Off in Software Licensing for the Datacenter

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Paying Attention to Roles Can Pay Off in Software Licensing for the Datacenter

July 01, 2015
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

In an age of Big Data, the datacenter has become one of the most important assets within an organization. For those who are responsible for managing the datacenter, the challenges are many, including staying on top of software licensing. If you have hot, warm and cold servers, the challenge becomes a little more complex.


It doesn’t help that software licensing terms and conditions can vary between publishers and products. For instance, you may be accustomed to knowing what the Active Failover server is, but not that it is also known as the hot backup server. Likewise, the warm backup server is also known as the Passive Failover server and the cold backup is simply a server that isn’t on until you need to go into disaster recovery mode. You typically don’t have to have a separate license for the cold backup server.

A recent Flexera Software blog examined some of the terms and related complexity in a recent blog post. While the terms are pretty easy to understand once you clarify the differences, the complexity really arises from the way different software providers treat the usage of their software. Microsoft (News - Alert) has very specific guidelines on where software licensing applies within the datacenter, including whether or not a server is running an instance and if you have executed one or more of its instructions.

The role the server plays also dictates the type of licensing that must be in place. While many providers do not require a separate license for the cold backup server, they may also eliminate the requirement if a server is for testing purposes. Servers used for testing, quality assurance or other non-production roles could also be exempt from software licensing rules. Likewise, the way you set up clusters can also dictate the application of the licensing, so even if the rules appear to comply with your operation in terms of type of server, you must also pay attention to configurations.

The key to proper software licensing is to understand the requirements put forth by the provider. It’s not the provider’s responsibility to ensure you understand the requirements and exceptions – that’s on you and your team to dig into the terms, roles and responsibilities of the servers as they are defined by the provider and comply accordingly. To that end, it may make more sense to examine the requirements first and the capabilities of the software second.

Regardless of the method, the point is there are complexities involved with software licensing for the datacenter that extend beyond the boundaries within the business environment. Pay attention to the small print and understand the roles and uses to ensure you are compliant.




Edited by Maurice Nagle

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