Licensing: Year-end Software License Compliance

Having recently gone though a software licensing inventory update , I thought that since it's year-end for a lot of people, I'd let you know what we do internally - as well as link-up some tools and suggestions. That said, I'm very interested to hear how readers approach and manage licensing issues so feel free to comment.

First of all, and I think everyone knows this... there are lots of tools to help you manage software licensing. So perhaps the first thing to consider is the size of your environment. If you have a small to midsized network - say even up to a few thousand machines - than there are many low/no-cost options available to you. If you're in a large environment... tens-of-thousands or more users, than you probably should be going with an enterprise-class solution. While we do work for some large clients - and manage some powerful tools for them like BigFix - internally, we're still in the small-to-midsized category. So that's where I'll focus.

For us, everything starts with my my AD-COIT hardware/software inventory script that I created to help me automate some of this effort. Consider grabbing a copy and trying it out yourself. I run it, and it just outputs a report - one that I've customized a bit for myself. But perhaps you want something with the Microsoft stamp of approval... then check out the Microsoft Software Inventory Analyzer (MSIA)... it's purpose-built for software inventory work. The reports are great, and the only real downside is if you support an application stack that has a lot of non-Microsoft applications, in that case you might not see everything you need with MSIA.

Next, I look at the last few lines of of the AD-COIT output to see if any computers failed to respond, or perhaps were out of the office. Since the script runs in real-time, it won't catch systems that are persistently out-of-the-office and for this group, there are a few options... what I do is create a global-group of "out-of-office" users, and scope a GPO to run a login-script that updates .txt files on a hidden share whenever users in this group are in the office. In practical terms this means looking a handful of text files and and doing a bit of manual consolidation to update my license counts.

Finally, I dump everything into a spreadsheet and compare it with our licensing information to produce a report of "Licenses in use", verses "Licenses Owned", which I then use to drive decision making and software budgeting. These inventory checks are done on a scheduled, quarterly basis, and it keeps us up-to-date in terms of compliance.

There are other good tools available as well... Spiceworks 1.0 for instance does a ton of useful stuff, has good reports, and is essentially free. I've tested it a bit, but haven't added it into the mix for licensing checks. Long-term for us, I think BigFix is actually going to make a lot of sense for us to deploy internally. Besides license discovery, it is very powerful agent-based patch-deployment and reporting tool that works in near-real-time.

How do you manage software licensing compliance?

WSS: Licensing for external users

Whenever you’re investigating licensing models, you should check with the vendor to verify that you’re following the appropriate model.

Not surprisingly, when it comes to external access to Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), this statement remains true. Having just gotten off the phone with Microsoft sales reps, and pre-sales engineers, the answer I received might provide some additional clarity for those of you investigating external access to WSS. What they told me basically confirms what I found on this site – but the additional background might prove helpful.

For all intents and purposes, WSS is considered a built-in component of Windows 2003 server. So it follows the standard Windows licensing model; meaning that you need a CAL for each user who will be accessing the site, as well SQL server licensing appropriate to your situation.

When it comes to external access, it’s important to consider “who”, and “how”. For instance, in the situation at hand, I needed to provide stakeholders’ access to WSS from the Internet. These particular stakeholders already have appropriate CALs, and as a result, they’re already covered under the Windows licensing model.

Where the situation changes, is when you don’t know the answer to the “who” part. Specifically, if you’re going to be providing anonymous access to your WSS sites, then you’ll need a “Windows External Connector” license (~$1,900 per server).

In other words:

No anonymous access = Windows CALs
Anonymous access = Windows External Connector license.

WSS Licensing requirements
http://wss.collutions.com/pages/II%20-%20Installation.aspx

SQL Server Licensing models
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.mspx

PAE mode, Physical memory beyond 4GB

One of our developers was asking me how our Virtual Server 2005 machines were capable of addressing more than 4GB of memory on a 32-bit platform. This is actually a pretty interesting question that I’ve been hit with more than occasionally, so I thought I’d post a quick entry explaining this, and linking some relevant resources.

Memory is a key component in what I would term, “recently overlooked hardware components”. I say that because processing costs have come down so much, and OS platforms have improved so dramatically, that even among IT professionals, people tend forget about architecture limitations.

That being said, physical address extension (PAE) mode is memory extension provided by Intel to enable support for greater than 4GB of physical memory in 32-bit Intel architectures. Essentially, PAE maps up to 36-bits of memory to a 32-bit virtual address space, allowing for up to 64GB of physical memory.

Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2003 Enterprise edition, and Windows 2003 Datacenter edition, are all capable of accessing various amounts of physical memory beyond 4GB via PAE mode (check this link for a detailed table with memory limitations ).

Probably the key take away for IT pros is that if you’re configuring a server with more than 4GB of RAM, make sure you have the right OS to take advantage of the additional RAM.

Additional Resources:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/pae_os.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEdrv.mspx

Update: 12/7/05
I ran across another link that provides some more depth to this...
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/library/TechRef/26eccf33-2454-4222-841a-c6d5aa1fc54c.mspx