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Windows Server 2016 licensing
Understand the licensing of Windows Server 2016.
John Savill
December 15, 2015
1 Min Read
Q. How will Windows Server 2016 be licensed?
A. Windows Server has historically been licensed by physical processors/sockets with a minimum of 2 sockets being licensed for each server and all sockets must be covered by licensing. Looking at todays modern processors that have a huge number of cores (look at the new many-core processors, for example Xeon Phi with 61 cores) and a shift to the cloud where processors are abstracted and only cores surfaced, Windows Server 2016 moves to core licensing.
Full details can be found at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/windows-server-2016/ and Microsoft has a detailed licensing FAQ is available at http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/2/9/7290EA05-DC56-4BED-9400-138C5701F174/WSSC2016LicensingFAQ.pdf with a datasheet available at http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/2/9/7290EA05-DC56-4BED-9400-138C5701F174/WS2016LicensingDatasheet.pdf.
Essentially the following applies to both standard and datacenter (which retain the same OS instance rights for virtualization, 2 for standard, unlimited for datacenter):
Every processor must be licensed for at least 8 cores
Every server must be licensed for at least 16 cores (this is equivalent to previous versions that requires two sockets minimum to be covered)
All enabled cores must be covered by licensing
Hyper-threads do not have to be licensed, only physical cores
Core licenses are sold in packs of two which means the minimum number for each server is 8 2-core packs
8 2-core packs will be the same price as the corresponding Windows Server 2012 R2 SKU which means providing servers have processors with 8 cores or less then price will be the same. Only for servers with processors that have more than 8 cores will require additional licensing
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