SBS 2011 Standard licencing - totally confused now
I'm working with a charity who have received SBS 2011 Standard as part of a VL OPEN agreement as a donation from Microsoft. This came with 5 CALs. This is on a licence with a whole raft of other software that was also donated at the same time (in fact they got 10 SBS 2011 MAK licences for some reason?)
Now, we're rolling this software out in migration mode so the SBS 2003 box has 60+ CALs on there and has been servicing everyone quite happily but daily there is a warning on the SBS 2011 box about the number of user accounts on the domain might exceed the licences available.
As I cannot check the licensing on an SBS 2011 box now what do I do?
What I have done is purchased an additional 50 user CALs via CTX (Charity Technology Exchange) but they have provided these on a seperate VL OPEN licence. I've been onto the VLSC and tied the licences together for an administration point of view but how does the SBS 2011 box know about these additional 50 user CALs that have been purchased?
Concerned that when we turn the SBS 2003 box off that it'll all come crumbling down like a pack of cards.
Have spoken to MS but was left more confused as they said I could just take my new VL OPEN licence agreement number (the new one from CTX) and add this to the SBS 2011 box (somehow)...how though? I don't see where I should/could be doing this. Oh and they also said that I could only have 75 user accounts on the server...period. Has that changed? I know it's 75 concurrent users but with SBS 2003 I could have hundreds of accounts if I want (but why would I) and then only 75 could connect...or have I been deluding myself all these years lol.
Severe lack of sleep now thru many different aspects of this job and could do without this hassle. Any advice greatly appreciated as always guys.
Now, we're rolling this software out in migration mode so the SBS 2003 box has 60+ CALs on there and has been servicing everyone quite happily but daily there is a warning on the SBS 2011 box about the number of user accounts on the domain might exceed the licences available.
As I cannot check the licensing on an SBS 2011 box now what do I do?
What I have done is purchased an additional 50 user CALs via CTX (Charity Technology Exchange) but they have provided these on a seperate VL OPEN licence. I've been onto the VLSC and tied the licences together for an administration point of view but how does the SBS 2011 box know about these additional 50 user CALs that have been purchased?
Concerned that when we turn the SBS 2003 box off that it'll all come crumbling down like a pack of cards.
Have spoken to MS but was left more confused as they said I could just take my new VL OPEN licence agreement number (the new one from CTX) and add this to the SBS 2011 box (somehow)...how though? I don't see where I should/could be doing this. Oh and they also said that I could only have 75 user accounts on the server...period. Has that changed? I know it's 75 concurrent users but with SBS 2003 I could have hundreds of accounts if I want (but why would I) and then only 75 could connect...or have I been deluding myself all these years lol.
Severe lack of sleep now thru many different aspects of this job and could do without this hassle. Any advice greatly appreciated as always guys.
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Thanx to all who replied here...been very useful
Thinking about concurrent users vs actual users, you are correct - you can licence "Devices". I recall from my training programme, that if you have a workshop with 40 PCs in it, where you run a 3-shift 8-hour rosta 24/7 you can licence each PC as a device, and create 120 user accounts to use with those 40 Devices.
*exactly* how this works in practice, I'm sorry I can't say, but it is one of the Microsoft examples of licencing for SBS 2011. Do a search on Technet, and you'll come across exactly this example!
Here's an extract from Technet:
Could you liscense the computers (devices) instead of the users. SBS liscensing is not concurrent, it is "number of users and/or devices". so you could have 10K staff with email accounts and so on, SO LONG AS there are fewer than 75 User licenses and Device licenses.
In most organizations, top staff and sales will want users liscenses, as they can use the SBS from home over RWW, or while on the road with their notebooks, or with their smart phones. But if you have, in the classic example, 40 computers and 3 shifts of 40 workers, then the appropriate thing to do is license those computers as Devices and allow the shift workers to use them. But if they don't have User licenses, then they are not licensed to address the SBS from any non liscensed device.