2003 Licensing question and possible outcome.

[casadeseus]

Hi all;
I recently took over as the new IT guy, I was very surprice that i could not RDP to one of the servers(Win 2003), therefore Im using vnc, I found that the Licensing mode was set to "per Device per user" and the amount of licenses (0).
So here are my questions
1- What can i do to change this to "per server"
2- What is the default?
3- What are the consequences of making this move.

Thank you all.
JC

 

[nsantin]

They are different licenses. Which one did you buy a per device or per server license? You can change this in Licensing.

BTW, I don't think this is your issue, sounds like you need Terminal Service licenses (if running in APP mode), which are different. What error are you getting when you attempt to access the server?

 

[casadeseus]

This is the message:
:to log on to this remote computer, you must have terminal server user access permissions on this computer. By default, members of the remote desktop users group have this permissions. If you are not a member of the remote desktop group....you must add them manually.

I get the same message for the administrator account,
and my own test account, with every single right and still get the same error message...plz help?
Thanks nsatin

 

[Teknoratti]

Is your Admin account part of the Remote Desktop Users group? There is a min. of 2 concurrent administrator logins.

As far as licencing you need to configure your licencing server. To change licene modes you need to be in Terminal Services Licensing configuration.

#1-There is a one time jump back, meaning if you have per device you can switch to per server only one time, you cant go back to per device.....or is it the other way around?? hmm.

#2-The default is whatever you set it up as when you first installed Windows 2003 Server.

#3-The consequences would be #1 plus the fact that you'll have to purchase a new set of CALs

 

[casadeseus]

Thanks teknoratti -
I guess i will have to duplicate this on a virtual server. and see what kind of results i would get.

I'm sure that you have 2 by default in the server mode.
what im trying to figure out is what would be the reasoning behind it, for the previous guy to set it to per device, and licensing set to zero....security?

 

[Teknoratti]

I dont know if thats necessarily right. Either he did a royal screw job on ya'll before he left or you're somehow misreading it, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

The reasoning behind setting per device mode would be b/c you may have multiple users utilizing the same machine at different times of the day, say maybe shift workers. That way you'll only need one CAL per device but with that one CAL you can have multiple users logging on the Terminal Server with the one CAL.

I would get on the horn with M$ and find out if your previous IT guy purchased and Licenses. you may just need to configure your licence server. Maybe it did not pull any down from the M$ Certificate Center.