Microsoft Flexible Virtualization Benefit
This document describes Microsoft's flexible virtualization benefit for licensing virtual machines and how to use it.
Microsoft's Flexible Virtualization Benefit is a new way to license virtual machines for Microsoft software. It was introduced in October 2022
Requirements to use this program:
- The virtual machine must NOT be hosted on a Listed Provider. As of July 2023 that list includes:
- Alibaba
- Amazon
- Microsoft
- (This includes all services running on a Listed Provider (for example, VMware Cloud on AWS)) The current list is maintained by Microsoft at this link: http://aka.ms/listedproviders
- You must have active Software Assurance on the licenses.
How to license using the Flexible Virtualization Benefit
The licensing varies slightly by the Microsoft title that you are looking to license.
Exchange Server
- Each license for Exchange Server grants customers the right to run one instance of Exchange Server on the server it was assigned to. This is in either a physical operating system environment (OSE) or virtual machine (VM).
SQL
- To license a virtual machine, you must allocate a number of licenses equal to the number of virtual cores in the virtual machine (operating system environment)
- There is a minimum of four (4) licenses per virtual machine.
- If any virtual core is at any time mapped to more than one hardware thread, a license is needed for each hardware thread to which it is mapped.
- All licenses must have active Software Assurance
System Center
- To license a virtual machine, you must allocate a number of licenses equal to the number of virtual cores in the virtual machine (operating system environment)
- There is a minimum of eight (8) licenses per virtual machine.
- If any virtual core is at any time mapped to more than one hardware thread, a license is needed for each hardware thread to which it is mapped.
- All licenses must have active Software Assurance
Windows Server
- To license a virtual machine, you must allocate a number of licenses equal to the number of virtual cores in the virtual machine (operating system environment)
- There is a minimum of eight (8) licenses per virtual machine.
- If any virtual core is at any time mapped to more than one hardware thread, a license is needed for each hardware thread to which it is mapped.
- All licenses must have active Software Assurance