Windows Server Datacenter licensing for VMware vSphere ESXi — Confirmation needed

Question

Dear Microsoft Licensing Team,

We are planning to purchase Windows Server Datacenter licenses for two physical servers running VMware ESXi hypervisor. We would like to confirm the correct licensing requirements and VM activation method.

Environment Details:

• Hypervisor: VMware vSphere Standard 8

Host 1:

Model: HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10

  Host 1: CPU: Intel Xeon Silver 4210R (10 physical cores, 1 CPU)

  
  Host 2:

  
     Model: HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10

     
        CPU: Intel Xeon Silver 4210 (10 physical cores, 1 CPU)
```Each server is planned to run approximately 7 Windows Server VMs.

**Questions:**

Can Windows Server Datacenter licenses be used for virtual machines running on VMware ESXi hypervisors, licensed based on the physical core counts? (Without requiring Hyper-V as the hypervisor?)

Since each physical CPU has 10 cores, and Microsoft requires a minimum licensing of 16 cores per server, can you confirm that we need to purchase:

1 x Windows Server Datacenter (16-core license) per server?

Total = 2 x Windows Server Datacenter (16-core licenses) for both servers?

How should we activate the Windows Server VMs under this setup?

Example: Should we use the Datacenter license key inside each VM manually, or use KMS activation, or other method?

Thank you very much for your guidance and clarification.

Answer 1

According to the licensing guide, you will need to do the following:

Windows Server DataCenter licenses for 20 cores per server (16 minimum + 4 more to be compliant), so you have 2 servers 2 processors per server 10 cores per processor.

2 x 20 (2x10) = 40 cores or 2 x 10 x 2 core pack for each server. It does not have to be running Hyper-V, it is supported on VMWare as well. And you would activate each server with the keys.

https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/docs/documents/download/Windows_Server_virtualization_licensing_guidance.pdf?msockid=0edb5c485ffe63881a4e48e15ef162c4