Can anyone give me some insight on how VPS licensing works with SPLA? According to my reseller, each VPS needs its own standalone license which seem to differ with what I read somewhere about Microsoft Server 2008 allowing up to 8 virtual stances with 1 license or something like that.
I currently have a server (Xeon 1x5310, 4gb RAM, 4x500gb hdd in Raid 10) with Windows 2003. Now do to a project I'm looking at installing Windows 2008 and upgrading to 2x5310 and 16gb of RAM on my server.
I'm looking to create a virtualized test environment for development of a new web service I'm working on. What I'm looking to develop right now is 2 file servers, 3 web servers, 3 MS SQL database servers and 1 DNS server (would prefer but not sure if hardware can handle it. Virtualization would be ideal as this is very similar to what we believe will we have when we launch the service.
I have a few questions I'm hoping you might be able to answer:
1) With the upgraded hardware specs, should it be able to handle the load if I assign each virtual entity 1 core with 2gb of RAM each?
2) I would like to create each of the multiple servers in a cluster (ie cluster of webservers) as this is how it will be in production. But, I've never worked with clusters before so:
a) where can I learn about clustering windows 2008 servers?
b) is this possible to do in a virtualized environment?
3) How does MS work the licensing? I want to have each server running Windows 2008 and 2-3 of them running SQL Server 2005.
a) Do they charge extra for each virtualized server?
b) Does this mean I have to purchase 3 complete copies of SQL Server or is there a way I can pay a low license fee for use in a non-commercial, non-production environment?
4) Does anyone see any problems with this setup or have any suggestions for me?
* I do have money available to spend on a good solution, so if you have suggestions that cost please let me know. I just thought virtualization would be the way to go as the project will be in development for at least a year with no public access.
** I realize that Hyper-V hasn't been released yet (that I know of) so information on it might be limited
Which virtualization technology is better? Hardware level or software level? My friend suggested me to go for software level virtualization. However, I am still concerned about the technology as to which I should choose?
Which virtualization technology is better? Hardware level or software level? My friend suggested me to go for software level virtualization. However, I am still concerned about the technology as to which I should choose?
Which VmWare product allows me officially to use it for VPS hosting business (ESXi does not allow that)? Do you have a link to document where they specifically authorize use of their software to make and sell VPS? Are there any legal limitations? What about vSphere standard?
What about Xen, what are limitations of free version? Which payed version is best for VPS hosting, are there any legal limitations?
I'm sure this has been covered before, but during my search I didn't find much, maybe someone can point me in the right direction.
Okay, so here's how it goes...
I, and a partner, plan on purchasing a 2U server and we're going to co-locate this server in Chicago. This server will be serving a new gaming company we plan on opening. Now, my main issue is obtaining Windows for this server. I have found plenty of retail CD's with like a 5 CALs included, but that was in the $750-$1000 range, which I understand this is what Windows server really cost, but I believe I could find it cheaper.
Does anyone know the BEST, and preferably the cheapest place to buy Windows Server 2003 (Specifically Standard 64bit - R2) or even an "external" monthly license, if such exist. I am new to the entire Windows Server licensing and pricing stuff, so any information would be very much helpful.
if anyone has an idea of which dedicated provider has the most reasonable prices when it comes to Virtuozzo licensing. I have looked at several and it seems prices vary.
I'm helping one of my clients setup some windows VPS's but we're having some serious confusion as to how the licensing works.
I've read on microsoft.com that they now are far more accepting of virtulization and allow, with a single license, anywhere from 4 to unlimited VPS installs with it.
Now, my question is: Does this count with leased licenses? Say I leased a license from my datacenter (say i did 2k3 STD) for $25/m. Would I then be allowed to install it on however many VPS's allow under MS without issue or how does that exactly work?
From the posts in this forum it would appear that a number of forumites are colocation service providers and web hosters that use Cisco gear.
I was reviewing the Cisco End User License Agreement that was included in the router box. Under the General Limitations section, "Customer shall have no right, and Customer specifically agrees not to:", item (iv) states, "use or permit the Software to be used to perform services for third parties, whether on a service bureau basis or time sharing basis or otherwise, without the express written authorization of Cisco".
Does this mean that a service provider is required to acquire a separate license similar to the Microsoft Service provider license?
My understanding is that the IOS software running in most of their products is non-transferable. So clearly this prevents a user from receiving updates if they purchase used hardware (i.e. ebay). However, isn't it possible to purchase an IOS software license from Cisco for any of their supported product?
Their web site is a mess! I've spent, literally, hours on their site trying to figure out how to purchase such a license, or how to purchase a service plan that might entitle me to IOS updates.
And how does "SMARTnet" fit into this puzzle? Do I need a SMARTnet contract to download maintenance updates, even for *new* hardware that I've purchased?
I have this nice vps, but its on linux, and I always wanted to run windows apps on the vps, because of the nice configuration. I already tried wine, but most of my windows apps don't work, cuz they require .net framework to run.
I tried to instal vmware server and virtualbox, but both of them complain about a kernel problem, they are unable to locate my kernel source, so they can't run.
I am linux newbie, and i am running on a centos 5 operating system.
Some people say its impossible to run virtualization 'inside' virtualization, but i already read some people that say its possible.
In another thread somebody had mentioned something about Citrix Xenserver utilizing shared iSCSI storage with multiple hardware nodes. I think this is a very intriguing concept, but is there anything open source or less expensive that you have used to accomplish similar resource virtualization?
This is a little bit Offtopic here but maybe it's okay to ask my question.
For my GUI software development i need a virtual server solution. It must run WinXP, WinVista, LinuxI386, LinuxAMD64, FreeBSDI386, FreeBSDAMD64 and Solaris.
I'm currently running VMWare with all this systems. But their KVM tools are very instable - especially when waking up from hibernate etc. They eat the key/mouse focus and the only way to get any reaction is often a hard shutdown.
How good are the other Virtualization Kits? I heared that FreeBSD does not work on VirtualBox? I'm especially interested in Xen but i'm not sure if this is good for Desktop use. Seems that it is promoted almost exclusively as a server solution.
We usually find some constrains using Apache/cpanel (1.3.41). Basically, we serve simple php codes and few images.
We usually setup our server to use lighttpd for static content and apache for dynamic content. Ok, due to some complex requirements on mod_rewrite we use that setup.
But frequently we see our apache reaches it limit and slow down with 0 idle servers. Specially as we have about 270 requests/per second on apache. Our load is low, barely passes 1,2 of load for small periods, our memory ok, our I/O is fine.
But we almost always reaches the 0 idle servers. Until now, our best config was:
Timeout between 60-120 KeepAlive Off MaxKeepAliveRequests 1000 KeepAliveTimeout 15 MinSpareServers 50 MaxSpareServers 200 StartServers 50 MaxClients 256 MaxRequestsPerChild 80
As we clearly see that our server is under usage, I was wondering if it's a limitation on Apache or if I put virtualization on my server and run two apache webservers as cluster I would get better results.
So what do you think about guys? It's a matter of optimization (what could I do better for this httpd.conf setup?) ? Or cluster with virtualization would deliver what I'm looking for.
I have tried to search but couldn't find the information I was looking for. We are starting to offer VPS and considering MS Virtual Server and vmWare. vmWare seems rock solid and feature rich. Which virtualization technology you are using? Is vmWare a good platform for vps for hosting industry?
Forget everything you've learned about Windows Server "authenticated" and "unauthenticated" licensing for your monthly SPLA reports. The game has completely changed, and NOT for the better.
Microsoft has changed to "outsourcer" and "non-outsourcer" licensing instead.
Quoting Microsoft:
Quote:
"Outsourcing is an application or service that a service provider manages for their customer. For purposes of this definition, the managed application or service is: (a) Used by its customer's employees, contractors, agents, or vendors (b) Not the service provider's intellectual property
I contacted MS directly for clarification on how this applies to webhosting. The response was, if the service provider is (and I quote), "simply managing the infrastructure layer and not managing anything else... in other words just keeping the lights on", that is non-outsourced.
If you are providing any software or management of the environment, even something as simple as Windows Updates or other basic management tasks on the server-- which is the case, for example, if you are running a shared webserver, then it is "outsourced".
Your email server is providing a service that is considered an outsourced service, and you must report (and pay for) an "outsourced" license for that server.
And here is the bad news.
Under the old terms, the Datacenter edition of Windows Server (which allows unlimited VMs at no additional charge on the machine where the license is assigned) cost just under $50/month.
The new "outsourcer" Datacenter license is nearly $250/mo. Yes, you read that right, a whopping 400% monthly license fee increase for Datacenter edition.
A single copy of Windows Server Standard edition is over $75/mo. when used in the outsourcing role.
Other pricing and terms have changed as well, so grab a copy of the new SPUR and READ it. All it takes is a moment of uncertainty to put you wildly out of compliance under this new layer of insanity.
so let's get this all hashed out... it'll be interesting to see how people handle various situations.
Before responding, let's keep this thread signature free.
I recently came across an issue where a customer wanted to bring their own Microsoft products/licenses to the table. Got a few questions for the other providers out there... this really needs to be hashed out.
Microsoft is very strict when it comes to enforcing their license policies, we all know this much.
So... when a customer wants to install their own software, what do people do to help ensure that whatever agreement you have with your upstream provider or Microsoft isn't in voliation by allowing someone to bring their own licenses?
What steps do you take to ensure validity of said licenses?
How do you define, much less enforce, these guidelines?
What role, if any, should a provider play in doing their part to help stem illicit license abuse?
Basically I need to virtualize a single new dell server. One virtual server needs to run windows 2003 server standard and Microsoft SQL 2005. The other virtual server will run CentOS Linux with a perl and PostgreSQL application.
The dell server is going to have two quad core xeon processors (8 cores total), 8gigs of ram, and two 15,000rpm SAS drives.
I came across Virutal Iron which is free for the single server instance and seems like it will do the job well. Has anybody used it? What is performance like? Seems to run a Java backend so wondering about the performance there.
Any other recommendations? I looked at VMware but the cost is so high, and probably more then I need, since I only need to virtualize a single server.
