MSDNAA Replacement

Question

We had the MSDNAA for our Netlab in the past.

My issues are as follows:

Our Networking Lab is separate from our community college.

Since our Netlab is separate from the main campus, we are responsible for maintaining our own servers, workstations, networking, etc. The only thing they provide for us is an Internet connection.

Main campus IT does not and will not provide us with any software licenses.

We formerly had the MSDNAA for our Netlab.

What we are looking for is something similar to what the Microsoft MSDNAA used to be. The closest thing I know of today is Microsoft VLSC.

At minimum we would need some type of educational package from Microsoft that allowed for X amount of Windows 10 activations.

Keep in mind that the classroom hard drives would be reimaged each semester and Windows 10 would have to be reactivated after the drives were reimaged. In the past this worked fine with keys for Windows XP.

Windows Server we would not be such a big deal since the trial version of Server 2019 is 180 days. That would allow plenty of time for students to learn what they needed to.

And we would need an available set of license activations for Windows Server 2016 and 2019 Standard/Datacenter for our 5x servers.

Our Networking lab consists of 24 computers, 5 servers (currently).

The lab computers are setup to have removable drives for our different classes.

Students in certain classes get their assigned hard drives.

Those hard drives can have Windows 10 or Windows Server (or Linux) for the students to learn and take their class on.

Is there a solution similar to MSDNAA? I’m thinking we can’t get Office with it, but that’s OK at this point.

 

And secondary, I’m trying to find out information if Microsoft has an Azure for Education option for Students to learn on – meaning, spin up VMs to learn how to use and work with Microsoft Azure.

This is of interest partly because everything is going to “the cloud” and we are seeing many job ads that want Systems Admins to have experience with Azure.

Also of interest because of the current COVID situation – teaching students remotely, such as if things get worse.  

We will also be looking to an Educational option with Google Cloud Platform and Amazon AWS for this.

 Thanks!

Answer 1

These ones may help you.
https://download.microsoft.com/download/8/9/A/89A3F8B9-94DE-4956-A56E-F6D2B215D0E6/Open_License_for_Academic_VLGuide.pdf
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/how-to-buy

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