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Home > Licensing requirements for multi-core processors and server virtualization |
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Licensing requirements for multi-core processors and server virtualization |
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| 26 Mar 2007 | Barb Goldworm, Contributor |
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Changes in CPUs have stirred up many licensing issues, as has virtualization. In the past, software was generally licensed per processor or per CPU, which was often the same thing. Now with multi-core, the question is should software be licensed by the core or by the whole processor. Different vendors have responded to this issue differently, so it's important to check the licensing restrictions for each vendor and product.
From a hardware perspective, licensing multi-core processors as one processor would create incentive for users to move to multi-core, and save in licensing costs. But of course, this causes problems for software vendors, who would lose significant revenue.
Virtualization has many of the same issues. As users consolidate from multiple physical servers to one physical server with mulitple virtual machines, what happens to the licensing? Is the software licensed by physical server or number of virtual machines? Also, is the license tied to a physcial server? This becomes an issue for availablity and load balancing (as with VMware's High Availability (HA) and Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) products), as guest virtual machines get moved (vmotioned) from one physical server to another. These licensing issues are currently being battled out, for example, between Microsoft and VMware.
Technology trends in processors and servers
 Home: Introduction
1: Multi-core processor benefits and trends
2: Going green in the data center
3: Licensing for multi-core processors and virtualization
Blades and Virtualization Summit: For more in-depth, up-to-date information on server chip issues, power and cooling improvements, futures in virtualization, blade server implementation and more, consider the Blades and Virtualization Summit on May 1-3. You'll hear from and connect with blade server hardware and virtualization software vendors, power and cooling companies, TechTarget expert panelists, and other experts on the latest products and services related to these technologies.
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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Barb Goldworm
Barb Goldworm is President of Focus Consulting, a research, analyst and consulting firm focused on systems and storage. She has spent 30 years in technical, marketing, industry analyst and senior management positions with IBM, Novell, StorageTek, Enterprise Management Associates, and multiple successful startups. She chairs the Blades and Virtualization Summit conference on blades and virtualization, and has been one of the top three ranked analyst/knowledge expert speakers at Storage Networking World. Barb has authored numerous business and technical white papers and articles and has just finished a book, Blades Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs. Email Barb for more information.
Copyright 2007 TechTarget
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