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We are a small business with two HP Servers(HPE ProLiant DL380) virtualized with ESXi, containing 7 VMs of Windows Server OS(2016).

As per Hardware documentation, each server has single processor with 10 cores each. So that should make 20 Cores total.

I did search about Microsoft Licensing and it says core based can have two licenses if 16 Core licenses are purchased.

Can anyone help me about

  1. How many Windows Server 2016 STD Licenses should I purchase to accommodate 7 VMs.

  2. If I purchase 1 Remote Desktop Device CALs for each of VM's (Total:7), multiple users in the domain can RDP login to the server?

Edit: The confusion here is only with Core Based Licensing from Microsoft.

Iqlas Uddin
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1 Answers1

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For the Datacenter version, you get an unlimited number of VMs so the equation is simple: Number of Processors in the Host x Number of Cores Per Processor (minimum of 8)= Number of Core Licenses Needed (minimum of 16). In your case, you have 2 servers.

So your grand total is 1 CPU x10 cores = 10 licenses x 2 servers = 2 10-core licenses.

But there's one more problem: if you have less than 16 cores, you need to license your server as if you had 16 cores. So practically, you need 2 licenses for 16 cores each.

In the standard edition, there's also the VM limitation which complicates things. You are limited to 2 VMs per physical server, which in your case is bad.

Overmind
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