When moving workloads to public Cloud such as Amazon Web Services, there are several factors to consider. A common challenge or decision point is whether to Bring Your Own License (BYOL) or use Cloud service included hourly licensing. Most relevant to license optimisation are organisations who are planning to migrate to the Cloud and in need of licensing optimisation as part of the migration journey. Microsoft licensing for Windows Server and SQL Server are most often than not the sole focus of a license optimisation exercise.
Small to medium organisations commonly have an easier decision to make, as the initial license investment may be low and moving towards a Cloud based hourly licensing model offers an efficient way of adopting Cloud services without the complexity involved in license management. In contrast, medium to large organisations may have large fleets of licensed workload components, with major investments and volume discount arrangements in place. When dealing with volume licensing purchased already, taking a step back to analyse these licenses and entitlements is highly recommended. For the latter scenario, this is where an Optimisation and Licensing Assessment (OLA) offers great insight and inputs to a migration journey.
To the untrained, the Bring Your Own License (BYOL) model and optimisation challenge is most often than not associated with complex license mobility rules and entitlements of the product, or product release version. During a cloud migration project, the license assessment focal points are commonly Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server, however similar license decision points are often imposed by other vendors. As an example, Oracle products may need a closer look to determine the impact to license entitlements, and how to maintain the workload performance versus compute core (vCPU / CPU Core) allowance.
In simple terms, the end goal of a license optimisation exercise is lowering the IT OpEx budgets, however there are more to this budget line-item and several hidden benefits to be had. During an Optimisation and Licensing Assessment (OLA), a key component thereof is a right sizing exercise, which assesses the current on-premises utilisation (CPU, Memory, Disk) to recommend a cloud-based “right sized” instance/virtual machine type. Right sizing in terms of provisioned storage, may further reduce backup volumes, or backup licensing expenditure. A welcome OpEx snowball for most scenarios.
When opting for BYOL SQL Server licensing to run on your own shared EC2-instance, these license packs are sold in 4-core packs per instance, irrespective of the number of vCPUs. Thus, where a right-sizing exercise indicates that several 4-vCPU virtual servers can be down-sized to 2-vCPU virtual servers and maintain the same performance, then consolidating 2-databases on the same server offers a reduction of 1 x SQL Server license and 1 x Windows Server license. Such a simple exercise lowers overall maintenance effort, backup-agent, anti-virus, and even Managed Services fees.
License optimisation for SQL Server may go one step further in most public Cloud environments. For example, where SQL Server Enterprise was used exclusively to provide Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) for regulatory compliance, taking a step back to reassess the technology position will highlight that transparent data encryption is now a standard offering within Amazon and Azure. Another factor to consider is that SQL Server 2019 Standard now includes TDE – however when deploying onto AWS, using Amazon EBS Encryption ticks this box without any additional configuration.
AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment, commonly referred to as OLA is an assessment program offered by Amazon Web Services to aid customers in their migration journey to make right-sized and well-informed decisions on Cloud licensing. The assessment is on average conducted over a 6-week period, taking stock of all infrastructure, operating systems, database engines, and server utilisation.
The AWS OLA provide cost models for running Microsoft workloads on Amazon Web Services (AWS), optimised for both licensing and compute. Using the complete set of infrastructure utilisation metrics, your AWS Consulting Partner can advise on the most appropriate target state infrastructure and build a Total Cost of Ownership model for your Cloud ecosystem.
An OLA engagement can also provide key inputs to help build your organisations Cloud Migration Business Case.
Licensing Gremlins
Let me share a crash course in the world of Microsoft licensing for the public Cloud. Before we start, we need to look at an important term “License Mobility”. In addition, the date 1 October 2019 needs to be taken into account.
License Mobility
Eligible Microsoft server applications can often be deployed on cloud infrastructure using existing licenses. This allows you to more easily move your workloads to cloud infrastructure without any additional Microsoft software licensing fees. This benefit is available to Microsoft Volume Licensing customers with eligible server applications covered by active Microsoft Software Assurance (SA) contracts.
Microsoft Windows Server
The Microsoft product terms do not grant Microsoft License Mobility to Windows Server, which in layman terms mean that you cannot deploy existing Windows Server licenses on Amazon EC2 shared tenancies.
An option to leverage Amazon EC2 with existing Windows Server licenses are to make use of EC2 Dedicated Hosts, however there is a catch in terms of licensing and operational risk.
For Windows Server to be eligible for BYOL on Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts, you will need to tick the following boxes:
- The license must either be purchased before 1 October 2019 (or a True Up purchase under an existing Enterprise Agreement)
- Must be Windows Server 2019 or earlier
Any Windows Server licenses purchased after this date are not eligible to be moved to an AWS deployment for Dedicated Hosts or Shared Tenancies.
When opting for dedicated hosts and only operating a handful of Windows servers of varying sizes and types (lets say 50), you will need to factor in that each dedicated host offers only one instance type (i.e., T3, M5, R5) and depending on the instance sizes, you may end up with all your BYOL Windows Servers on the same dedicated host. When working with large fleets, placement of critical workload components and redundancy then still remains a very important topic to address.
Microsoft SQL Server
For Microsoft SQL Server that have Microsoft License Mobility with active Software Assurance, you can bring those licenses to Amazon EC2 shared tenancy environments and EC2 Dedicated Hosts. As discussed previously, this is where the minimum core-pack licensing comes into play and needs to be considered when choosing this deployment model to avoid over-licensing vs. compute requirements.
A few notes
- Renewing software assurance on a Microsoft Server license as part of an Enterprise Agreement renewal will not change the “purchase date” for any server license purchased prior to 10/1/19
- Windows Servers purchased through volume licensing prior to 10/1/19 or purchased as a true up on an agreement that was effective prior to 10/1/19 can be run in AWS on Dedicated Hosts.
- SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint & Remote Desktop Services retain their License Mobility Rights and can run in any AWS environment with active software assurance.
- Licenses obtained from the Cloud Solution provider (CSP) program cannot be used and are not eligible for BYOL.
Interested in License Mobility through Software Assurance, consult the AWS website for more information.
This post is not intended to provide licensing advice for your specific needs and license entitlements.
Please consult your applicable Microsoft license agreements.