Virtualized Servers More Likely to Need SA

Customers must buy Software Assurance (SA) for Exchange Server 2013, Lync Server 2013, Project Server 2013, and SharePoint Server 2013 server licenses to reassign those licenses between computers more frequently than every 90 days. This change may increase costs for customers who virtualize server workloads and require the flexibility to move virtual machines (VMs) between servers on a frequent basis. However, most of the licensing fees for these four products are generated by Client Access Licenses (CALs), so the new server-side license rules shouldn’t impact overall licensing costs significantly.

Virtualization and Reassignment Rights

Rather than dedicate a physical server to a specific workload, it is becoming increasingly common for customers to run server workloads within VMs hosted on hardware running VMware, Hyper-V, or other virtualization technologies. In many virtualized data centers, VMs regularly move between physical hosts—often without operator intervention—for load balancing, high-availability, and other purposes.