Licencing Windows 11 vms correctly running on Hyper-V or ESXi

Question

Hi,

I have a customer looking to run 20 x Windows 11 Pro vms hosted on either an on-prem Windows Server or VMware ESXi. For the Windows Server scenario, how is this solution licensed correctly?

Do the devices connecting to the Win 11 vms need a base qualifying Windows licence?

How should the Windows 11 vms be licenced? (M365 or Win 11 Pro retail?)

Are Windows Server CALs required for the connecting devices?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hello there,

For virtual machines running Windows operating systems, each virtual machine instance typically requires its own valid Windows license. This means that if you are running Windows 11 as a virtual machine (VM), you would generally need a valid Windows 11 license for that VM, regardless of the devices connecting to it.

Unlike Windows Server which includes the OS cost with the VM, Windows 10 and Windows 11 require that you bring your own license that can be used in a cloud environment. For production environments, this means a multitenant license found in specific enterprise and other licenses listed here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/windows-desktop-multitenant-hosting-deployment

For development and test environments, you can use Windows Client images available to specific Visual Studio subscriptions as well as other offers as listed here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/client-images

Hope this resolves your Query !!

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