Microsoft Windows 2022 Standard Edition Client Access Licensing

Question

Our network will have a physical mini tower single-CPU 4-core server with licensed Windows 2022 Server Standard Edition running on it.

On the same server, we'll also have a licensed MySQL database. The server will be accessed by its human administrator remotely or physically. The server will NOT be accessed by other users, only by its administrator.

There'll be NO Virtual Machine running on the Windows 2022 server. Just MySQL database and most likely a licensed version of MS Office, Adobe Reader, Notepad ++, and other open source software used ONLY by the server's administrator.

Windows 2022 will never be a Domain Controller. We do NOT have a Windows domain, only a simple workgroup setup, and we're currently ecstatic staying like that. The Windows 2022 server will never play another rule (be a File Server, a Web server, etc.) in its lifetime, just like its predecessor, which has been doing the same thing for the last 15 years.

MySQL database will be accessed by licensed 3rd party software ABsr2 installed on 7 client machines running licensed Windows 10 or Windows 11. The client machines are separate physical entities from the physical server.

The server administrator will install and manage the MySQL database. A desktop administrator will ensure that ABsr2 client software is installed and licensed correctly, and then he'll collaborate with the server administrator to ensure the clients have connectivity to MySQL.

Then our users will work on the client machines using ABsr2 client software, and life will continue happily and uneventfully. When a client loses connectivity to MySQL, the server and desktop admins will collaborate (the desktop admin will NOT physically nor remotely access the Windows 2022 server and vice versa); hopefully, they'll resolve the issue, and life will return to normal.

Questions:

1. Do I need to buy 7 CALs (well, perhaps 2 blocks of 5 CALs, since Microsoft rounds up CALs to the closest 5) for the 7 physical client machines ABsr2 software runs on?
2. Does Windows 2022 Stand Edition support a max of 2 direct connections (meaning either physically logging to it or remotely) access as it used to be with Windows 2003 or 2008, if I recall correctly?

Please let me know if there's any other critical piece of info I forgot to include so the community can provide an accurate answer to our questions.

Answer 1

1- Yes, you'll need windows Cals.

A Windows Server CAL is a license that grants access Windows Server. CALs are used in conjunction with Microsoft Windows Server OS licenses to allow Users and/or Devices to access and utilize the services of that windows server

• User CALs allow a single user access to Windows Server from an unlimited number of devices
• Device CALs allow an unlimited number of users to access Windows Server from a single device
• CALs are licensed to access servers of the same level and below. (not forward compatible)

2- Windows server allows up to two concurrent remote desktop sessions for administrative purposes.

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