Re: [TCLUG:22812] Licensing of NT in a linux vs nt whitepaper

[jack@jacku.com]

Some of this has been mentioned by others but I'll give my take on it. I researched MS licensing for an unpublished article I wrote comparing support costs to licensing cost for upgrades of Win NT 4.0 to Win 2K. 

The first thing is that licenses come in two parts, the server license and the client access license or CAL. When you see NT server with 5 users this means that you get 5 CALs. If more users than CALs connect you get License manager errors and log hits. This can be a problem if you're hit with an ASP audit. ;-) NT server CALs extend to all NT Servers on the network. (This includes multiple domains, I think.) I suspect the same is true for SQL Server but I haven't looked into it in any detail. 

The result: You need 1 NT Server license (includes IIS 4 or 5) plus 1 SQL-Server with unlimited clients. In theory if you are not connecting LAN workstations to the NT server you need no CALs for it but the base package comes with 5 so you're safe. If you choose to use less than the unlimited client license for SQL-Server you may run into an issue where some user can't connect because the server only accepts X concurrent connections. Again this may be a soft meter (logging the violation) but it might not be in the current versions. My SQL-Server experience is limited (but increasing, unfortunatly).

This rambled a little so let me know if I just confused the issue.

Jack

On Tue, 17 October 2000, Bob Tanner wrote:

> 
> Since I have never really used NT for anything, I am not sure I totally
> understand the licensing agreements.
> 
> I am writing a paper comparing linux to nt from a cost prospective (money).
> 
> Now, I see you can get NT 5-user for around $1000 list. Attempting to read the
> EULA confuses the hell out of me, so I am going to ask the list.
> 
> If you use NT as the operating system for a web site, can you run your web site
> on just a 5-user license? Even if you take (cough) millions of hits a day on
> this box?
> 
> Reading the EULA it seems that you have to purchase an unlimited-user license
> because the 'net represents unlimited users of this machine.
> 
> Is the correct? The info I want seems to be in the EULA but I cannot pull it out
> of all the legalise that is in there.
> 
> * Next Topic *
> 
> Doing a similar thing for Postgres vs MySQL vs MS SQL server vs MS Access.
> 
> MS Access seems to say single user, so as a db backend to a busy website, is the
> NT box the 1 user? 
> 
> Again, EULA for MS SQL Server is confusing. There seems to be issues
> about users and simulanteous connections. If you use MS SQL server as the
> back-end, do you need to have unlimited users, or will the 20-user version work
> for a busy web site?
> 
> I'd be happy to share this with the LUG, so people will have a reference to it
> for other Linux vs NT sales pitches.
> 
> -- 
> Bob Tanner <tanner@real-time.com>       | Phone : (612)943-8700
> http://www.mn-linux.org                 | Fax   : (612)943-8500
> Key fingerprint =  6C E9 51 4F D5 3E 4C 66 62 A9 10 E5 35 85 39 D9 
> 
> 
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Jack Ungerleider - The Ungerleider Group
Creative Solutions for Cooperative Computing
jack@jacku.com
www.jacku.com