Management Suite Licensing Changes

Starting July 2009, Microsoft began offering two types of management suite licenses rather than one, the most important difference being the number of virtual machines (VMs) that can be managed. Both System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) and the new Server Management Suite Datacenter (SMSD) allow management of server workloads using Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Data Protection Manager, and Virtual Machine Manager. For past and future customers managing servers with one or two processors, the changes are mostly price-neutral. However, some customers licensing larger servers will see substantial price increases, mostly in the form of rising future Software Assurance (SA) payments.

(For background on the function of each of the System Center products and how they are licensed individually as well as in a bundle, see the sidebar “Primer on Licensing System Center Products“.)

What Changed

Before the July change, an SMSE license provided rights to use all four System Center products to manage an unlimited number of operating system environments (OSEs) running on a licensed physical server. (OSE is a term that can refer to both physical and virtual OS instances.) After the change, new SMSE licenses allow management of no more than four simultaneously running VMs, as well as the physical Windows Server OS instance, assuming the physical OS performs no other workload (such as file and print services) other than hosting the VMs. To account for the reduction in functionality, Microsoft cut the cost of an SMSE license by 20%, with the Open Volume price (which reflects the maximum price a business customer would pay through volume licensing) now US$783 per device, down from US$980.