Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition Licence cost

[Maccer101]

What would be a ball park cost in £ or € for a year for 250 licences for Windoews server 2003?

We are putting together a budget and IT hven't given me a figure yet

thanks

[Moby-Dick]

Lots

are you planning on virtualising ?

[Maccer101]

We do run virtual servers, our licences are due for renewal soon and US head office haven't come back on the cost thats why I'm asking. Just a rounded expert estimate would do

[Moby-Dick]

Windows licences aren't annual - unless you pay for software assurance.

The reason I asked about virtualisation is as follows - an enterprise licence allows up to 4 virtual instances of that operating system to run , while a datacetner licence allows for unlimited virtual instances - for example if you had 250 physical servers and were paying $1000 a licence ( retail is considferably higher but we only pay a small ammount over this but theys becuase we have alot of them )

you woudl need 250 licences , so a bill of $250,000.

If you used a low end virtualisation product like MS virtual Server them you might be able to run 4 VM's per host.

to host 250 VM's in that way would require 250/4 would require 63 Hosts , so your windows licencing would go down to $63,000

now if you had a well set up ESX environment you coudl host 32 VM's per host ( 4Way )
You'd need 9 hosts ( allowing 1 for HA )

You'd need (9*4) CPU licences at $1000 per licence , so only $36,000 + ESX licencing

I dont want to give exact costs as they are part of our MS agreement but the relative costs are the same. Retail on both of those is consierably more.

[Maccer101]

Thanks Moby!!

[Jay]

Don't forget that Microsoft now allow you to virtualise 4 EE servers on one physical server with one Licence!

**Edit**

Moby has already said that