First, I do not believe that it is humanly possible to be compliant with Microsoft Licensing. Even with 50 full time employees who only check licensing requirements in an environment of only 49 computers there would still be some kind of weird violation.
You are building a box to test and will be quickly upgrading it to 2008 DC to test a migration. Just do it. You end result will be compliant I am sure...how you get there will not trigger the Microsoft SWAT team to break down your door. If you are trying to be correct and you are out of compliance on a minor issue for a couple of days as you move towards a compliant migration they just won't care. From: David Lum [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2011 9:16 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Licensing Q. I have a client that just last night I stood up their 2nd Hyper-V server. They are an SBS 2003 shop and now I (think I) have the capability to test upgrading to a 2008 DC in a sandbox. Question: Am I violating a license agreement by using a copy of the production SBS server in a VM environment to test changes that if successful will get deployed to the production SBS server? The VM won't talk to anything outside its sandbox I just intend to test a schema change and 2008 DC addition so I can be comfortable what I doing will work in their environment. I'm pretty sure the letter of the EULA is "only one copy bub" but I don't think what I'd like to do is really against the intent. I can't imagine MS would want me to buy an SBS 2003 license just to stand up a test box just to test a change. Or maybe they do? David Lum // SYSTEMS ENGINEER NORTHWEST EVALUATION ASSOCIATION (Desk) 503.548.5229 // (Cell) 503.267.9764 ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
