Should I be concerned with out of license warnings? 1

[gramatoncleric]

Should I be concerned with out of license warnings coming from the application log in event viewer? The system seems to work find and everyone has access to things even though there are more users logged in than the available license. If the system is working, why should I upgrade the license? Currently I have 14 different logins in the system on a standard five-user license. It might be a 10-user license. How can you find out? Currently we are set to "Per Seat

 

[mrmentalfloss]

Thanks Joe .. this answers all my questions about CAL's .. now comes the other hard part .. figuring out exactly what the different windows 2000 server editions are as well as 2003 server editions. i didn't think there could be so many versions of a server edition.

I just relized how BIG the scheme of servers are for Windows Server editions. I wonder how small business can stay in business with these costs? but that is for another thread.

Thanks again.

PS this is my first real project dealing with MS software, i mainly deal with linux environments.

 

[NickFerrar]

Mrmentalfloss - how many Windows 2000/2003 servers are you going to have? JBruyet is talking about per server licensing (where by you only need enough licences to cover you concurrent users) but if you have multiple servers than it's generally cheaper to go per seat which means you need to buy 1 CAL for each user. In per server mode you would need to buy a set of licences per server to cover the concurrency. E.g. If you have 100 users and 2 servers, 60 users max access server A and 50 users max access server B under per server licensing you need to purchase 110 licences (60 for A and 50 for B), under per seat licensing you need to buy 100 (1 for each user).

For your mobile users - they're fine when not connected to your network but if they VPN in for example and then access a Windows resource then they've been authenticated at some point (or you have a big security hole).

In terms of selecting Windows 2000/2003 server editions, firstly get Windows 2003 unless you have a specific need for Windows 2000. Secondly get Windows 2003 Standard edition unless the server has more than 4 CPUs/4GB RAM or you need to do clustering. This link is a pretty good feature comparison:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/features/compareeditions.mspx