Hi Toran,
To use an existing license with Azure VMs you need to enable the hybrid benefit on that VM. You can read more about it here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/hybrid-use-benefit-licensing
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Hi there,
We have a customer who has deployed the below VM in pay-as-you-go pricing model in Azure
Operating system (OS): Windows Server 2019 Datacenter
VM Size: Standard D16s V4 (16 vCPU, 64 GB RAM)
The customer is getting charged for Windows license as pay-as-you-go pricing. To save on the Windows license cost the customer has asked us to activate the CSP Windows license.
We have two Windows available with us:
I want to know will any of the above licenses work with the customer's VM? How does the CSP license work with Azure VM? What is a CSP Windows core-based license?
Hi Toran,
To use an existing license with Azure VMs you need to enable the hybrid benefit on that VM. You can read more about it here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/hybrid-use-benefit-licensing
Hello, @Toran Vaishnav ! Those licenses won't work for your customer. I'll go into more detail below.
What Windows Server licenses will work on an Azure VM?
I reached out to the virtual machine team regarding this issue. If they want to save on licensing costs on the VM, they would need to utilize Azure Hybrid Benefit. To qualify for Azure Hybrid Benefit, you must meet the following licensing prerequisites:
In addition, you need a minimum of 8 core licenses per VM (even if you run a 2 or 4 core instance, more than 8 cores would require a more than 8 core license):
So in the case of your customer, those licenses would not work for a 16 vCPU VM as you would need 16 core licenses.
You need a minimum of 8 core licenses (Datacenter or Standard edition) per VM. For example, 8 core licenses are still required if you run a 4-core instance. You may also run instances larger than 8 cores by allocating licenses equal to the core size of the instance. For example, 12 core licenses are required for a 12-core instance. For customers with processor licenses, each 2-core processor license is equivalent to 16 core licenses.
The Windows Server Datacenter license works as long as it has active Software Assurance. If you don't have Software Assurance, please work with your Microsoft account team or a Cloud Service Provider partner.
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