Virtual Server Licensing

Although the environment may be virtual, the licenses for the guest OS and applications running on Virtual Server 2005 must be real. Consider the scenario where an application development team wants to create a virtual server to test changes to an in-house line-of-business application that uses a SQL Server 2000 database. They have a new two-processor server. They must license each layer of the server as follows:

Host OS. A server license for Windows Server 2003, the host OS, is required for the physical server.

Virtual Server 2005. A server license is required for Virtual Server 2005.

Guest OS for virtual server 1. Because the application uses Windows 2000 Server, when they create the virtual server they must license Windows 2000 Server.

SQL Server 2000 for virtual server 1. Because the application they are using requires SQL Server 2000, which they license on a per-processor basis, and because the host hardware has two processors, they must obtain two SQL Server 2000 per-processor licenses for virtual server 1.