CAL's or Just Core Licensing for Windows server 2022?

Question

Greetings,

I keep stepping on my own toes with this and can't seem to understand this. Upon tons of research and many forums, I can't bring myself to a final answer... -

I have a local server setup which is basically setup as a PXE server. The server is setup in a lab, where we image through a WinPE. Basically, we unpack and bench 50 devices, PXE boot to the server which hosts the WinPE and pull the image that's stored on the server (for simplicity, lets says its MDT). This is basically all the server is used for and all it ever will be used for.

What license do i need? i have been under the assumption that all i will need is a core license until someone said i need CAL's as well.

Will i need 50 CAL's? will the Core License suffice?

Answer 1

Hello,

For Server Licenses, this is required to legally run the instance of the Windows Server operating system. The Windows Server license is typically sold based on the number of cores in the server. For Client Access Licenses (CALs), these are required for every user or device that accesses the Windows Server. Therefore, if you have 50 devices that will access the server, then, in most cases, you would need 50 CALs. CALs are not licensed per server, but per user or per device for your entire environment. You do not need a CAL for every server that a user/device might access, just a CAL for each user or device.

In your case, since you are using the server solely as a PXE server to deploy images via MDT and if there are no other server roles being utilized that would require additional CALs, the core licensing alongside enough CALs to cover the devices connecting to it would generally be sufficient. If your use case only involves devices PXE booting and not using any other services that require authenticated access to the server, you might not need CALs for each device. It's recommended consult directly with Microsoft Licensing or CALs vendor for clarification based on your specific scenario. You can contact them by phone via this link: Volume Licensing Support Info. | Microsoft Learn

I hope this helps.

Best regards