I can't even
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They are all referencing a document is is completely irrelevant.
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Straight from the MS docs.
As MS makes clear, SA doesn't cover cold backups, but only cold backups that have additionally been set up for disaster recovery purposes only. They make it clear that standard replicas that are kept cold need no license.
My definition, industry definition, MS definition - all agree. I got it from this originally.
The term "been set up for DR purposes", of course, refers to being ready to turn on automatically and would then need the license ready before it turns on. One set to be turned on manually or that requires approval before turning on would not need the license, but it is not set up yet, but could be very quickly. At which time the license would be needed.
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@tim_g said in I can't even:
@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
@tim_g said in I can't even:
@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
@tim_g said in I can't even:
So, the guy who talks directly to Microsoft to ask these very questions is incorrect?
http://www.aidanfinn.com/?p=11837Windows Server 8 Hyper-V Replica, Veeam, Etc With Hosting Companies
If you replicate a VM from your licensed hosts to a hosting company of some sort using Hyper-V Replica (Windows Server
or one of the plethora of 3rd party alternatives, then you need to license the installation of Windows that is in each replica VM ā¦ even if it is powered off or locked in a replicating state. Donāt bother with any of the usual āitās not being usedā or āitās only being replicatedā arguments ā¦ it needs a license so thatās that.A benefit of Software Assurance is Cold Back-ups for Disaster Recovery. This means that if you license your hosts (and thus your guest OSs if correctly licensed with Enterprise/Datacenter editions) with SA, then you get a benefit of licensing for the cold backup copy. The alternative is to not buy SA for the host/guests and have to buy full licenses for the offline replicas. This benefit allows your primary site to go offline and to power up the replicas during a catastrophic event. You can do this without doing anything to activate the benefit or without communicating with Microsoft.
That's the misinformation I'm talking about. MS never says anything about that. And it is obviously not true as it means things like Veeam can't be used.
This is beyond question, incorrect information. That much we know for a fact. There is nothing from MS that suggests anything of the sort and if they did, it would be the instant end of Windows.
You are using industry standard terms to justify your misconception of what MS licensing is required. You need to go by what they say, not what you are.
Hence why I provided their documentation that agrees.
That documentation isn't written for VM and/or Hyper-V replication... it jsut has the word replicaiton in it, that is all.
Well it's the document that is being used as the source on Spiceworks. If you have a different one, by all means, I've searched and Google has no knowledge of any such replica licensing.
But MS took the time to make their own definitions. They would have to call themselves liars to have something different now, as they used this as a technical source document.
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The whole thing is just dumb, seriously.
If you use Hyper-V Replication, or Veeam Replication, or other "replication" as MS defines it, you just need to have it licensed properly. Deal with it.
If you use Windows Server Backup or Veeam Backup, or any backup, no, not the same thing and you then only need to worry about licensing if you decide to run that backed-up VM on something.
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According to the random and unofficial 4Sysops site, Hyper-V Replication is included and requires no license.
https://4sysops.com/archives/new-hyper-v-replica-features-in-windows-server-2012-r2/
I keep searching, but can find no MS reference to any new licensing needs for cold backups of this nature. Nothing at all, not on Technet, not even in MS Social from a tech. Lots of SW threads come up, full of the same information we have here and have worked through before there - and every time resulted in not needed licenses in those threads.
For there to be a need to have a license contradicting other MS statements, MS would need a document that overrides that in the more current case.
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@tim_g said in I can't even:
The whole thing is just dumb, seriously.
If you use Hyper-V Replication, or Veeam Replication, or other "replication" as MS defines it, you just need to have it licensed properly. Deal with it.
Right and properly = no license needed here. It's as clear as can be. As MS defines it, no license is required.
Dealing with it is exactly what I've been doing.
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@tim_g said in I can't even:
If you use Windows Server Backup or Veeam Backup, or any backup, no, not the same thing and you then only need to worry about licensing if you decide to run that backed-up VM on something.
It IS the same thing, as defined by Microsoft. You are telling us to use Microsoft's definitions - then refusing to use their definitions.
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@Tim_G what is the source of you feeling that everything we know, can find, or can logic about MS is wrong. You keep saying to use their definitions, that the documents from them are wrong, etc. Fine, no problem, but those are the only resources that we have. Everything we can find is exactly the same and supports the same conclusions - the obvious, logical ones.
You are convinced that MS, logic, and the research we've done is wrong. Okay. But why? Where are your contradictory documents, updated licensing info, or whatever from MS? I've produced solid evidence, and you are just telling me I'm dumb, but you aren't telling me why. In fact, your "why" supported what I had said. So I'm lost. What's the basis for not believing both MS and the industry?
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@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
@Tim_G what is the source of you feeling that everything we know, can find, or can logic about MS is wrong. You keep saying to use their definitions, that the documents from them are wrong, etc. Fine, no problem, but those are the only resources that we have. Everything we can find is exactly the same and supports the same conclusions - the obvious, logical ones.
You are convinced that MS, logic, and the research we've done is wrong. Okay. But why? Where are your contradictory documents, updated licensing info, or whatever from MS? I've produced solid evidence, and you are just telling me I'm dumb, but you aren't telling me why. In fact, your "why" supported what I had said. So I'm lost. What's the basis for not believing both MS and the industry?
Actually, it's the opposite of what you are saying... EVERYTHING is saying VM replication requires the replica to be licensed. You are the only one saying different.
They all say the same thing:
- Replicated VM = licensing needed, via SA, or additional licenses on the replica host
http://www.itprotoday.com/virtualization/hyper-v-replica-licensing
https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/microsoft-server-licensing-virtual-environment-revisited/
https://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/roadmap/2013/03/windows-server-2012-hyper-v-includes-replicas
http://www.aidanfinn.com/?p=11837
https://download.microsoft.com/download/E/.../WindowsServer2016-Licensing-Guide.pdf
The following is in the above PDF and is specific to Software Assurance ONLY. Without SA, you cannot do the below without additional licensing, and uses the "Disaster Recovery" benefit of SA:
- ...a Windows Server license is not required for the disaster recovery server if the Hyper-V role within Windows Server is used to replicate virtual OSEs from the production server at a primary site to a disaster recovery server.
- ...The disaster recovery server may be used only to run hardware virtualization software (such as Hyper-V), provide
hardware virtualization services, run software agents to manage the hardware virtualization software, serve as a
destination for replication, receive replicated virtual OSEs, test failover, and/or await failover of the virtual OSEs.
... in other words, it's not a benefit of SA if you don't need SA to do it in the first place.
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...
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@tim_g said in I can't even:
https://download.microsoft.com/download/E/.../WindowsServer2016-Licensing-Guide.pdf
The following is in the above PDF and is specific to Software Assurance ONLY. Without SA, you cannot do the below without additional licensing, and uses the "Disaster Recovery" benefit of SA:
- ...a Windows Server license is not required for the disaster recovery server if the Hyper-V role within Windows Server is used to replicate virtual OSEs from the production server at a primary site to a disaster recovery server.
- ...The disaster recovery server may be used only to run hardware virtualization software (such as Hyper-V), provide
hardware virtualization services, run software agents to manage the hardware virtualization software, serve as a
destination for replication, receive replicated virtual OSEs, test failover, and/or await failover of the virtual OSEs.
... in other words, it's not a benefit of SA if you don't need SA to do it in the first place.
Where are you getting your interpretation from? You just provided exactly what supports that I said, but claim it is the opposite. Nothing from MS says otherwise. And all those other links are not MS and are specifically the misleading non-source material that people keep quoting instead of MS.
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@tim_g said in I can't even:
https://download.microsoft.com/download/E/.../WindowsServer2016-Licensing-Guide.pdf
File not found.
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@tim_g said in I can't even:
@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
@Tim_G what is the source of you feeling that everything we know, can find, or can logic about MS is wrong. You keep saying to use their definitions, that the documents from them are wrong, etc. Fine, no problem, but those are the only resources that we have. Everything we can find is exactly the same and supports the same conclusions - the obvious, logical ones.
You are convinced that MS, logic, and the research we've done is wrong. Okay. But why? Where are your contradictory documents, updated licensing info, or whatever from MS? I've produced solid evidence, and you are just telling me I'm dumb, but you aren't telling me why. In fact, your "why" supported what I had said. So I'm lost. What's the basis for not believing both MS and the industry?
Actually, it's the opposite of what you are saying... EVERYTHING is saying VM replication requires the replica to be licensed. You are the only one saying different.
They all say the same thing:
- Replicated VM = licensing needed, via SA, or additional licenses on the replica host
http://www.itprotoday.com/virtualization/hyper-v-replica-licensing
https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/microsoft-server-licensing-virtual-environment-revisited/
https://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/roadmap/2013/03/windows-server-2012-hyper-v-includes-replicas
None of these apply, why link them? We've stated before that there is loads of misinformation out there that never references anything from MS. This is them.
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@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
I was actually consulting on a backup design just yesterday where we were using Hyper-V in exactly this way as a backup target, but building the backup system using Starwind. It was a backup device in every way, no expectation of VMs to run there, no live systems ever, just Hyper-V + Starwind used to handle the replica-based file backups.
This sounds a bit like a Unitrends appliance setup - where you can launch the backup as a VM if needed, but I'd assume in the case of Unitrends, the moment you do that, you either just transferred the license to the Unitrends box, or you bought a license for it.
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@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
I managed to get a copy of the licensing guide... reading now.
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@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
@tim_g said in I can't even:
https://download.microsoft.com/download/E/.../WindowsServer2016-Licensing-Guide.pdf
File not found.
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@dashrender said in I can't even:
@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
I was actually consulting on a backup design just yesterday where we were using Hyper-V in exactly this way as a backup target, but building the backup system using Starwind. It was a backup device in every way, no expectation of VMs to run there, no live systems ever, just Hyper-V + Starwind used to handle the replica-based file backups.
This sounds a bit like a Unitrends appliance setup - where you can launch the backup as a VM if needed, but I'd assume in the case of Unitrends, the moment you do that, you either just transferred the license to the Unitrends box, or you bought a license for it.
Right, systems like Unitrends, Datto, Veeam, etc. all allow you to spin up in the same place as the backup from both backups and replicas (as they are the same thing) meaning if MS requires this... then you need it for every backup copy no matter where it is - based on the ABILITY to run it, not actually running it.
Which then makes you wonder if having a copy on an external USB would need to be licensed for every server on earth, since it could be plugged in and spun up literally anywhere, right?
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@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
@tim_g said in I can't even:
https://download.microsoft.com/download/E/.../WindowsServer2016-Licensing-Guide.pdf
The following is in the above PDF and is specific to Software Assurance ONLY. Without SA, you cannot do the below without additional licensing, and uses the "Disaster Recovery" benefit of SA:
- ...a Windows Server license is not required for the disaster recovery server if the Hyper-V role within Windows Server is used to replicate virtual OSEs from the production server at a primary site to a disaster recovery server.
- ...The disaster recovery server may be used only to run hardware virtualization software (such as Hyper-V), provide
hardware virtualization services, run software agents to manage the hardware virtualization software, serve as a
destination for replication, receive replicated virtual OSEs, test failover, and/or await failover of the virtual OSEs.
... in other words, it's not a benefit of SA if you don't need SA to do it in the first place.
Where are you getting your interpretation from? You just provided exactly what supports that I said, but claim it is the opposite. Nothing from MS says otherwise. And all those other links are not MS and are specifically the misleading non-source material that people keep quoting instead of MS.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying VM replication does not require the other end to be licensed because replica/backup = same thing.
I'm saying that yes, the other end does require licensing, and that I can't find anythign anywhere that says otherwise.
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@tim_g said in I can't even:
@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
@tim_g said in I can't even:
https://download.microsoft.com/download/E/.../WindowsServer2016-Licensing-Guide.pdf
The following is in the above PDF and is specific to Software Assurance ONLY. Without SA, you cannot do the below without additional licensing, and uses the "Disaster Recovery" benefit of SA:
- ...a Windows Server license is not required for the disaster recovery server if the Hyper-V role within Windows Server is used to replicate virtual OSEs from the production server at a primary site to a disaster recovery server.
- ...The disaster recovery server may be used only to run hardware virtualization software (such as Hyper-V), provide
hardware virtualization services, run software agents to manage the hardware virtualization software, serve as a
destination for replication, receive replicated virtual OSEs, test failover, and/or await failover of the virtual OSEs.
... in other words, it's not a benefit of SA if you don't need SA to do it in the first place.
Where are you getting your interpretation from? You just provided exactly what supports that I said, but claim it is the opposite. Nothing from MS says otherwise. And all those other links are not MS and are specifically the misleading non-source material that people keep quoting instead of MS.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying VM replication does not require the other end to be licensed because replica/backup = same thing.
It doesn't require it because nothing requires it. In order for something to need a license, MS must define it as needing one.
A replica, and a backup, are just cold files. nothing more. No files, ever, require a license from Microsoft. Of course, MS could change that, but they never have. There is absolutely nothing in the MS ecosystem where you must pay a license fee in order to store a file on disk.
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@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
@dashrender said in I can't even:
@scottalanmiller said in I can't even:
I was actually consulting on a backup design just yesterday where we were using Hyper-V in exactly this way as a backup target, but building the backup system using Starwind. It was a backup device in every way, no expectation of VMs to run there, no live systems ever, just Hyper-V + Starwind used to handle the replica-based file backups.
This sounds a bit like a Unitrends appliance setup - where you can launch the backup as a VM if needed, but I'd assume in the case of Unitrends, the moment you do that, you either just transferred the license to the Unitrends box, or you bought a license for it.
Right, systems like Unitrends, Datto, Veeam, etc. all allow you to spin up in the same place as the backup from both backups and replicas (as they are the same thing) meaning if MS requires this... then you need it for every backup copy no matter where it is - based on the ABILITY to run it, not actually running it.
Which then makes you wonder if having a copy on an external USB would need to be licensed for every server on earth, since it could be plugged in and spun up literally anywhere, right?
Yes, they do. They do backups, and you are able to spin up a backup on the Unitrends server. This would fall under the "Disaster Recovery" benefit of SA, which you must have in order to do so. Without SA, you need a license to do this as well. But this isn't what Microsoft refers to as Replication.
Even with replication, the same is true.
