How many VM's on Server 2008 Enterprise Edition?

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Hi all,
I am currently installing a new Hyper-V server with Windows 2008 Enterprise Edition and have the license that also has licensing for 4 VM's.

My question is this, will the Enterprise Edition run more VM's than 4 with the purchase of additional licenses, or is it limited to 4?

JV

 

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You would have to purchase more CALS, your next restriction would then be ram.

As long as you have the CALS you can install the OS on to what you want (including Vmware), where the Host becomes bogged down is when you try to run too many guests with not enough resources.

 

you wouldn't need more CALs
you would need more Windows licences (the expensive stuff)

Cals control the ability for clients to access servers

you need additional server licences
so with another Enterprise licence you could run 5 more VMs
with a Datacenter license (per socket) you can run unlimited VMs (hardware permitting)

 

It's a fairly hefty server 2x quad core Xeon E5520 CPU & 32Gb RAM and 8 NICs so it should be fine for running 5 VM's on to start with. Looking to run Win 2k8 Ent Core with Hyper-V role installed, then VM's on top.

I had seen on one of the Microsoft pages that Enterprise Edition was for 4 VM's and Data Center was unlimited but could'nt find any info to say if Ent Edition was limited to stop more VM's running than the 4 supplied virtual licenses.

 

My bad

 

I'm not so sure about this one.
As far as I know the 1+4 model (Enterprise) applies only to 1 being a host and 4 being VM's on this host. I think I've seen somewhere that those guest licenses are not transferable to other hosts.

It would be nice to have confirmed information though.

edit:
it's definately not additional 5 VMs:

from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/licensing-r2.aspx

So if in the best scenario you can run additional 4.

 

It's used to be correct, it used to be that the VM licensing allowed for a total of 5 machines for Enterprise but that's assuming 1 is the host and the other 4 are on the hosted on that host. If you want to add additional OS licenses you would needed to purchase the amount required for however many hosts you wanted to add. However that could all have changed as MS did revise their VM licensing last year.

As far as transferring the hosts, actually you can but only if you're doing it in a Live\V motion environment, add to that you then have a limitation on when you can move those machines back.

Licensing is a very complicated issue and it changes all the time.

 

Aye your right mate, the 5 was actually a typo :P
the 4+1 model does indeed not transfer
BUT, you can buy additional Ent licences and use the +4
so if you have one physical
and two Ent licences you can run, the one physical and 8 guests

better option at that point would of been two Datacenter licences though