Microsoft goes public with Windows Server 2012 versions, licensing
Summary: Enterprise and Small Business Server are both going away; four new versions of Windows Server remain with the new release, which could be released to manufacturing real soon now.
There will be four versions of Windows Server 2012, Microsoft officials revealed on July 5, two of which will be licensed to customers on a per-processor basis.
The four SKUs are Foundation (available to OEMs only); Essentials; Standard and Datacenter. The Essentials SKU is for small/mid-size businesses and is limited to 25 users. The Standard and Datacenter SKUs round out the line-up. The former Windows Server Enterprise SKU is gone from the set of offered options.
Here's Microsoft's new SKU/licensing chart for the four editions of Windows Server 2012:
"There were about a dozen SKUs in Server 2008 R2 including SBS (small business server) and HPC (high performance computing). Now we have 4 SKUs in WS2012," said Aidan Finn, a Microsoft Valuable Professional (MVP) with an expertise in Virtual Machine who works for MicroWarehouse Ltd, an Irish Value Added Distributor, as a Technical Sales Lead. (Finn has more on these changes in a new post on his blog.)
Finn explained that Standard covers 2 CPUs in a host, and goes from one VOSE (virtual operating system environment - 1 free Std install in a VM on that host) to two, and "now has all the features and scalability of Datacenter." He noted there will be a small price increase, but said he thought that wouldn't matter, as it "should be virtualised anyway and the VOSE rights doubling will compensate.
Windows Server Datacenter was a minimum of two 1-CPU licenses with unlimited VOSEs. "Now it is a simpler SKU that covers two CPUs in a host with unlimited VOSEs," Finn said.
"The news is good for 99.5% of people. It's all getting simpler, and matching the model of the System Center 2012 Server Management License (SML)," Finn claimed.
Microsoft delivered the last public test version of Windows Server 2012, known as the Release Candidate, in late May. The product is expected to be released to manufacturing the same time that Windows 8 client is -- which could be this month or next.
Update: There's a lengthy frequently asked questions document from Microsoft about the new SKU/licensing line-up. As a couple of my readers noted, the document makes it plain that there will be no more Small Business Server versions of Windows, going forward. That's not making some folks very happy.
The FAQ says: "Windows Small Business Server 2011 Premium Add-on, which includes SQL Server and Windows Server as component products, will be the final such Windows Server offering."
Update No. 2: Folks are asking whether today is also the official acknowledgement of no more Windows Home Server releases. I am asking Microsoft to see if officials will say anything on this (finally), one way or the other....
And the official answer on WHS is: It's dead.
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Talkback
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Office 365
Yes and no
The cloud isn't do-able for smaller businesses like professional services where customer data can't be relegated to distributed computing....and then there's the problem with WHO and WHERE your cloud actually is operating. Remember that the Patriot Act is a big problem for any company outside of the US.
small subset?
Office 365 versus an onsite Exchange is not the same
A hosted Exchange with a third party vendor who has a faster support response is a better solution. The Office 365 P plan gives you community/forum support only. When a small business needs support.... you NEED support.
@bitzie
Office 365 has had down time, as has my clients' on-premise Exchange infrastructure.
Some of my clients have experienced several days' down-time when their Exchange servers' hardware has failed necessitating a server rebuild/replacement and data store recovery. Most recently, a clients' Exchange & AD servers HDD's crashed when they lost power in an electrical storm: It took more than 10 days to fully restore service causing MAJOR disruption to their business.
Sure, Azure went offline for 24hours. But the Office365 Op's team is FAR more capable compared to my clients' IT "teams".
Most of my clients are now more than happy to host their business email in the cloud operated by vendors that they trust. Most of my clients trust Microsoft because they have proven to be HIGHLY capable. They trust Microsoft FAR more than they trust smaller operators with less substantial infrastructure, history and capabilities.
When a small business needs support.... you NEED support. In my extensive experience, Microsoft's BPOS and Office365 support has been exemplary. They respond quickly and authoritatively to the (very few) issues we or our clients have had and follow-up with regular updates and follow-on checkups.
@bitcrazed,
I think people put in the cheapest servers they can find, with substandard parts, little redundancy, and bad warranties, and then expect them to be reliable. Sure, I've had customers with harddisk failures. They didn't miss a minute of work. They are setup on RAID 1. I had the vendor send out a new harddisk, I pushed the release button, took out the defective harddisk, slid in the new one, and let it automatically rebuild the RAID, all while the server was running and people working. No down time. Same thing with a failed power supply.
I've taken all my customers off the cloud with their crummy service, and poorly trained/lazy techs. Now they are on to their own reliable servers. They are happy again. The cloud is a fancy name for a server located who knows where, serviced by who knows who. I've seen the work these cloud techs do. It stinks. The whole concept is completely oversold.
Yes
For that matter, why not just say Office 365 makes Exchange obsolete for any company? Hey, if the small companies don't need internal servers why should the big ones?
Bottom line is many factors come into play when deciding if an application -- any application -- should be maintained internally or relegated to a Cloud service.
Home server is toast
"Real soon now" - Hmmm
Clarification on Datacenter pricing
Microsoft goes public with Windows Server 2012 versions, licensing
So long, SBS
Our SBS 2008 server is now getting long in the tooth, and I was thinking about what are upgrade options are. We came to the conclusion that in 2012 there is no real sense for us to run our own Exchange server; it's generally just a PITA and there are real, grown-up cloud offerings out there that can satisfy our needs. (Although, we plan on trusting but verifying with our own periodic backups.) That leaves just running AD and DNS on a simple Server 2008 R2 Foundation machine -- a standard set up without the complexity of SBS.
I think Microsoft just came to the same realization that we did.
Foundation is only 15 users
Web edition?
SBS dead? What it's too complicated for MS to look after such a large market with a simple product.
CALs for a server is commercial these days anyway.
The bizarre behaviour of MS continues.
Bring back editing