System Center 2012 Licensing

System Center licensing will change considerably with the release of System center 2012. The great news is that it will become much simpler than it is with the current System Center family of products.

The first change is with the products. Currently, System Center is a product family name with a suite of products. In total there are six products which comprises the suite. In short notation we have SCCM, SCOM, SCVMM, SCDPM, SCSM and Opalis. And you buy them separately (or the Management Licenses in bundles).

With System Center 2012 we changed these products to components, which is major. It means that when buying System Center 2012, you get the full suite of components. Basically, the components are new versions of the previous products but can no longer be bought separately (because they are components). And we added one new component to the suite; App Controller.

With System Center 2012, you buy the Server Management Licenses in either a Standard Edition or a Datacenter Edition. Both editions are licensed per processor and each license covers two processors per device. Both editions contain all components. The difference between the two lies in virtualization rights.

The Standard Edition is meant for low density or no virtualization environments and includes the right manage up to two Physical Operating System Environments (POSE) or two Virtual Operating System Environments (VOSE), including the host. The Datacenter Edition allows for an unlimited number of VOSE’s.

The Management Server licenses are now included with the Server Management licenses. Currently, you need to buy a Management Server license (the license for the Management Server) and Server Management licenses for all OSE’s you want to manage. And there are two kinds of Server Management licenses: the Standard Management License and Enterprise Management License. But these are gone as well. This means that the Server Management license suites like Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) and Server Management Suite Datacenter (SMSD) are gone as well.

Not only the Management Server license is included, with the license comes the right to run the supporting SQL Runtime as well. Each device that runs a server OSE needs a Management License. And each device that runs a client OSE needs a Client Management License.

So licensing with System Center 2012 becomes considerably easier. For more details, visit the System Center 2012 page.