Backup System For 5 PC SMB
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As this client is only five PCs, I have a suspicion that you are running OEM copies of Windows and have not gotten them a volume license deal? This could be a problem. Not only would you be lacking VDI licensing, if this is the case, but you would have unlicensed OSes going to the DR site as well.
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@scottalanmiller said:
As this client is only five PCs, I have a suspicion that you are running OEM copies of Windows and have not gotten them a volume license deal? This could be a problem. Not only would you be lacking VDI licensing, if this is the case, but you would have unlicensed OSes going to the DR site as well.
Yeah this has branched into another topic, really.
The VDI licensing question is really only in relation to all the products on the market that allow you to spin up VMs for disaster recovery.
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@scottalanmiller said:
As this client is only five PCs, I have a suspicion that you are running OEM copies of Windows and have not gotten them a volume license deal? This could be a problem. Not only would you be lacking VDI licensing, if this is the case, but you would have unlicensed OSes going to the DR site as well.
That a lesson I did learn recently. While apparently MS can be flexible sometimes with OEM licensing, it is much easier to have volume licensing.
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@BRRABill said:
The VDI licensing question is really only in relation to all the products on the market that allow you to spin up VMs for disaster recovery.
Correct. But that's a big piece of your current planning and the reason that you wanted image backups sitting in the cloud.
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@BRRABill said:
That a lesson I did learn recently. While apparently MS can be flexible sometimes with OEM licensing, it is much easier to have volume licensing.
Yes, with OEM I've seen a little flexibility if hardware has failed and is being replaced in situ. That I can see some grey area in "well the motherboard died but the rest of the machine is still there." But VDI I've never heard of grey area on.
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@BRRABill said:
So I guess the question for @chris is:
What are the MS rules when it comes to disaster recovery? Again, we are only talking about using a BMR (which also requires activation) or a VM in a disaster recovery scenario.
It would probably be good to know both about server and desktop OSes as both can be backed up using these products.
There are no "disaster recovery" rights with Windows desktop OS licensing.
As Scott mentioned, licensing a Windows desktop OS VM from a server requires a license from Microsoft in this scenario. The license options are either Windows SA or Windows VDA depending on the device and OS installed. There is a ton of documentation on this topic.
I wrote a how-to on this here: http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/124053-licensing-windows-10-with-virtualization-technologies-how-to
Microsoft has a VL brief on this topic here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Licensing/learn-more/brief-windows-virtual-machine.aspxLMK what additional questions you have.
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@Chris said:
LMK what additional questions you have.
So for a BMR, in the case of open license, it's not an issue because you can just reassign the license, right? But in the case of an OEM license, is it true that in the case of total failure Microsoft will allow you to reinstall to new hardware? Is that true?
And in the case of a VM. You are saying that if I want to spin up a copy of my image just to make sure it is backing up properly and accessible, I need an additional license for that?
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@BRRABill said:
@Chris said:
LMK what additional questions you have.
So for a BMR, in the case of open license, it's not an issue because you can just reassign the license, right? But in the case of an OEM license, is it true that in the case of total failure Microsoft will allow you to reinstall to new hardware? Is that true?
And in the case of a VM. You are saying that if I want to spin up a copy of my image just to make sure it is backing up properly and accessible, I need an additional license for that?
No you can't reassign an Open License of Windows desktop OS. There are NO transfer or reassignment rights with Windows desktop OS Upgrade licenses via VL. I wrote an article on this here: http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/124052-transferring-and-reassigning-windows-10-licensing-how-to
Additionally, NO, you can't move the OEM license to a replacement device, EVER. Even if the mobo dies, (unless you get an identical mobo) you need a new OEM Windows license.When licensing VDI, you don't license the server for Windows VDA or Windows SA - just the client accessing devices.
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I think that the big take aways are....
- Don't think of desktops as servers. Normally this would not occur to people to do but as all of the data is being stored on them it is causing you to think of them as little file servers.
- Think of replacing a desktop as either fixing the old one or replacing (in which case a new one has its own OEM license.)
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Using enterprise server backup software, which on its own is a good thing but huge overkill for desktops, is leading you towards odd thinking as well. Those vendors had no intention of their products being used for backing up desktops. Sure you can, it works and they are happy to support that but fundamentally no thought is put into getting that working because it's not an intended or assumed use case. So all of their processes and features are designed around the intention of there being server licenses involved.
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Sounds like just having a spare machine available might be the way to go.
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Most of my thinking has been on the server level.
I just don't get the concept of having to buy a whole new server license if my motherboard dies. I guess that's what makes Hyper-V such an attractive option.
And I was certainly told that you can call Microsoft and explain the situation and often they will reissue the license, which is in direct contradiction to what @Chris has said.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Using enterprise server backup software, which on its own is a good thing but huge overkill for desktops, is leading you towards odd thinking as well. Those vendors had no intention of their products being used for backing up desktops. Sure you can, it works and they are happy to support that but fundamentally no thought is put into getting that working because it's not an intended or assumed use case. So all of their processes and features are designed around the intention of there being server licenses involved.
But server licenses have the same issue, no? Can you move a server open license from one machine to another? I know you can't do it with OEM.
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@BRRABill what I posted was for Windows desktop OS, not server.
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@BRRABill said:
I just don't get the concept of having to buy a whole new server license if my motherboard dies.
You don't have to, for anything. You can always replace your motherboard.
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@BRRABill said:
Most of my thinking has been on the server level.
This is all desktop though
Gotta pull away and think about a five user, all desktop workgroup and system design around small business, not big business. Requires a different approach than when you have big businesses with centralized authentication, storage, etc.SOHO setups lean to very simple setups. Always an exception, of course, but in general.
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@scottalanmiller said:
it is only OEM licenses that cannot do a BMR recovery.
OEM can BMR to the original hardware it was sold with, but not to replacement hardware, technically not even identical replacement hardware.
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@BRRABill said:
But server licenses have the same issue, no? Can you move a server open license from one machine to another? I know you can't do it with OEM.
Of course, server licenses are totally mobile. Everyone does that all of the time. If you couldn't, you couldn't have things like VMware or HyperV clusters or load balancing or failover.
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@Chris said:
@BRRABill what I posted was for Windows desktop OS, not server.
What are the rules for a server OS?
For OEM licenses, and also spinning up a VM for disaster recovery purposes. Are you saying that is allowed?
Thanks!
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@BRRABill said:
And I was certainly told that you can call Microsoft and explain the situation and often they will reissue the license, which is in direct contradiction to what @Chris has said.
No, actually it agrees with it 100%. If you can convince Microsoft to grant you a new license that suggests extremely strongly that you did, indeed, not have a license for what you wanted to do and needed to get a new one.
Now, I've never heard of Microsoft ever granting a new license in that case. Literally, never heard of anyone pulling that off. But it is not impossible, just unlikely. Banking on it, though, would be very foolish.
