Microsoft Windows Server Optimization Report

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

For Windows Server, Microsoft offers four key alternatives for licensing:

Windows Server Datacenter, which covers an unlimited number of virtual machines (VMs) with installations of any edition of Microsoft Windows Server on the host. All cores of the Host must be licensed. The core consumption calculation is the number of cores on the host, applying a minimum of 8 cores per processor and a minimum of 16 cores per host.
Windows Server Standard on physical servers, where the core consumption is computed the same way as for Windows Server Datacenter. For hosts with VMs, a host licensed for Windows Server Standard (using the same calculations as for Datacenter edition) will cover two VMs. For each additional pair of VMs, the server must be re-licensed for the same number of core licenses.
Core Infrastructure Datacenter is a bundle license that allows administrators to license Windows Server Datacenter and all related System Center agents by means of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (previously Microsoft SCCM). Core consumption is calculated the same way as for the Windows Server Datacenter license.
Core Infrastructure Standard is a bundle license that allows administrators to license Windows Server Standard and all related System Center agents by means of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (previously Microsoft SCCM). Core consumption is calculated the same way as for the Windows Server Standard license.

Licensing a Windows Server on ever-changing virtual infrastructures can be complex and challenging.

Administrators may either:

Pay a higher price to cover ESX servers hosting an unlimited number of VMs with Windows Server Datacenter edition
Cover the ESX hosts with the less expensive Windows Server Standard edition, in proportion to the number of VMs running the software, and adhering to the reassignment restrictions.

Tip: Windows Server Standard adheres to the license re-assignment rule. Windows Server Standard license entitlements cannot be reassigned on a short-term basis (within 90 days of the last assignment).

Further complexities are:

There is no clear direction on how VMs deployed with a Windows Server Datacenter edition operating system must be licensed.
VMs with no host (mainly due to vCenter import issues) show no consumption in IT Asset Management. To avoid underestimating license requirements, we can use the license consumption from VMs with hosts to estimate consumption for orphan VMs.

The Microsoft Windows Server Optimization Report addresses the complexities and challenges associated with Windows Server licensing. The report calculates VM density across both hosts and clusters, and helps you implement best practices for Windows Server licensing.

The report includes all consuming devices:

Virtual hosts where installed VMs are running Microsoft Windows Server
Orphan VMs (those where the host server cannot be identified)
Stand-alone computers.

This report calculates an optimal license, based on:

Hosts / cluster Windows Server VMs density
Presence or not of VMs with Datacenter editions
Presence or not of System Center client installation in the same cluster
A VM threshold based on the Datacenter to Standard cost difference. Generally, this threshold is 12 VMs for Windows Server and 9 for CIS.
Note: If the thresholds computed from the cost for reference licenses are partial or wrong, the report will fall back to the default costs and thresholds.

The report includes non-inventoried Windows Server VMs in hosted VMs. Non-inventoried VMs are VMs, reported by the vCenter integration, that are "powered on" and have been reported less than 10 days ago.

Prior to running the report, administrators are required to enter the following inputs:

Scope of licenses: Triggers the assessment of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (previously Microsoft SCCM) deployments for a choice between Windows Server and Core Infrastructure Server licenses (on a cluster basis).
Note: Core Infrastructure Server (CIS) is the Core Infrastructure Server license that allows administrators to use Windows Server (Standard or Datacenter) coupled with Microsoft's management agent called System Center.

Tip: In IT Asset Management, the license for either edition of either Microsoft product is represented as a Microsoft Server/Management Core license type.
Approach for Datacenter VMs: "Traditional" or "Optimized".
- Choose "Traditional" if you want the presence of a VM running Windows Server Datacenter edition to require a Datacenter license
- Choose "Optimized" to have all VMs treated equally, without regard for their edition of Windows Server.
Assessment metric: How do you want to assess the density of VMs running Windows Server?
- 90 day peak: This is the optimal approach. The report will evaluate host by host the movements of VMs based on history and the 90 day peak of non-exempted Windows Server VMs. Note that a daily inventory of your vCenters will ensure the accuracy of the peaks.
- Worst case: This approach considers that all VMs in a cluster can move to any of its hosts, and calculates the optimal license for each of those hosts, based on the total number of active Windows Server VMs in the cluster. This option is costly.
- Highest VMs # in Cluster: Applies the number of VMs from the highest density host for the selected cluster when the report is launched. This approach is deemed intermediate, but more realistic than the "worst case" assessment.
- 90 day peak / VMs: Microsoft introduced in October 2022 the option to license VMs with a minimum of 8 cores with Windows Server Standard if you have Software Assurance. This 4th option will evaluate DataCenter for the host versus Standard for the host (for the 90 peak number of VMs) versus licensing each VM currently on the host with the minimum of 8 cores.
Show Orphan VMs: This option allows administrators to hide orphan VMs that may represent a large number of rows with no consumption. The "All Orphan VMs - XXX" rows (that have no device type) summarizes the estimated orphan VMs (not hosted in the cloud) consumption and always appears in the report. For each CIS and Windows Server license, the ratio of VMs with and without a host is applied to the known license consumption to estimate the consumption for orphan VMs.

Example use case

See the Example use case for an illustration of three different approaches based on the Worst case, 90 day peak and Highest VMs # in Cluster assessment options. Each approach counts consumption from a single cluster.

Generating the report

Note: This report is scoped to the data that each operator is entitled to see, according to their access rights. While an administrator can see all available licenses, clusters, consumption, and optimizations, another operator who has access rights restricted to EMEA sees only those elements linked to the EMEA location, and to any of its child locations.

Go to the Microsoft Windows Server Optimization page (Reporting > License Reports > Microsoft Windows Server Optimization).
Click Run report to display the results for all installations of Microsoft Windows Server running in clusters or on stand-alone devices.

All results are shown as of the latest inventory import and license reconciliation process, for which the date and time are shown in the right-hand end of the title bar, against Reconciled:

Reading the report

The following columns (listed alphabetically) are available.

Note: To save space, in several of the following column names these abbreviations are used:

(WinSvr Dtctr) for the Microsoft Windows Server Datacenter license
(WinSvr Std) for the Microsoft Windows Server Standard license
(CIS Dtctr) for the Microsoft Core Infrastructure Server Suite Datacenter bundle license
(CIS Std) for the Microsoft Core Infrastructure Server Suite Standard bundle license.

Please keep in mind that some columns are accessible by means of the column chooser to limit the default number of columns displayed.

Column name	Description
% VMs in cluster with System Center	Of all the VMs running on hosts in the current cluster, this is the percentage that are running System Center.
CIS Datacenter consumption	The total exposure (for the next annual true-up) of consumption for all rows relating to devices covered by the Core Infrastructure Suite Datacenter license, if the proposed optimization is applied in your environment. Tip: If this column has no value, it means that there is no CIS Datacenter license recommended by the report.
CIS Standard consumption	The total exposure (for the next annual true-up) of consumption for all rows relating to devices covered by the Core Infrastructure Suite Standard license, if the proposed optimization is applied in your environment. Tip: If this column has no value, it means that there is no CIS Standard license recommended by the report.
Cluster name	The path in the virtualization hierarchy to the cluster (in the form of domain/clustername). Cluster names are not forced to be unique, although giving them unique names is best practice. If you need to differentiate between (for example) two clusters with the same name, check the hosts and instances.
Cluster WinSvr Dtctr VMs	For all the hosts that are in the same cluster as the current host shown in this row, this is the total number of VMs that are running Windows Server Datacenter.
Cluster WinSvr VMs to inventory	For the cluster shown in the Cluster name column in this row, this is the total number of VMs that have not yet returned individual inventory through an inventory agent, but have been reported by vCenter as running Windows Server. The VMs must: Have been reported by vCenter less than 10 days ago Have been powered on when last inventoried by vCenter. Since vCenter does not report the edition of Windows Server, and the Device role of these VMs is unknown, these VMs are all treated as running Windows Server Standard edition in a Production role and are taken into account in the Windows Server VMs counts.
Comment on optimization	For rows where the Device type is `VM Host`, this comment explains how the Optimal license was determined, including factors like the number of VMs running on the host, and whether System Center is present in the cluster. Cost is not evaluated.
Consumed cores	The licensed cores consumed by the virtual hosts or standalone device shown in this row. This is the consumption that will result if this device is covered by the Optimal license. Tip: Orphan VMs are not included in this total, but instead have dedicated rows that summarize the estimated total consumption.
Cores	The total number of processor cores available in a physical inventory device; or the number of cores assigned to an inventory device that is a virtual machine.
Cost/core (CIS Dtctr) (currency)	The cost per device core under a Core Infrastructure Suite Datacenter license. This is the unit cost used for calculating values in this report. The report finds the maintained Core Infrastructure Suite Datacenter license with the largest number of associated purchases (see Reference license (CIS Dtctr)), and then this value is taken from the first available of: The Amount field on the Financial tab of the license properties The Override unit price shown in the Purchases tab of the properties of the reference license The most recent Unit price in software purchases attached to the reference license The default value of 485 (a hard-coded value based on the US$ list price per core). Tip: While this default can give a rough estimation of costs and potential savings, best practice is to use the actual purchase costs or overridden value. Important: USD currency must be added as a supported currency to your tenant. Note there is no requirement to make USD your default currency. If USD is not added to your list of supported currencies, returned VM host data may contain discrepancies such as missing VM hosts and inaccurate price related data. To add USD currency, navigate to Administration > IT Asset Management Settings > Defaults > Currency Settings. On this page select Add a Currency and then United States Dollar (USD) from the Currency drop down list. When finished select Add.
Cost/core (CIS Std) (currency)	The cost per device core under a Core Infrastructure Suite Standard license. This is the unit cost used for calculating values in this report. The report finds the maintained Core Infrastructure Suite Standard license with the largest number of associated purchases (see Reference license (CIS Std)), and then this value is taken from the first available of: The Amount field on the Financial tab of the license properties The Override unit price shown in the Purchases tab of the properties of the reference license The most recent Unit price in software purchases attached to the reference license The default value of 116 (a hard-coded value based on the US$ list price per core). Tip: While this default can give a rough estimation of costs and potential savings, best practice is to use the actual purchase costs or overridden value. Important: USD currency must be added as a supported currency to your tenant. Note there is no requirement to make USD your default currency. If USD is not added to your list of supported currencies, returned VM host data may contain discrepancies such as missing VM hosts and inaccurate price related data. To add USD currency, navigate to Administration > IT Asset Management Settings > Defaults > Currency Settings. On this page select Add a Currency and then United States Dollar (USD) from the Currency drop down list. When finished select Add.
Cost/core (WinSvr Dtctr) (currency)	The cost per device core under a Windows Server Datacenter license. This is the unit cost used for calculating values in this report. The report finds the maintained Windows Server Datacenter license with the largest number of associated purchases (see Reference license (WinSvr Dtctr)), and then this value is taken from the first available of: The Amount field on the Financial tab of the license properties The Override unit price shown in the Purchases tab of the properties of the reference license The most recent Unit price in software purchases attached to the reference license The default value of 385 (a hard-coded value based on the US$ list price per core). Tip: While this default can give a rough estimation of costs and potential savings, best practice is to use the actual purchase costs or overridden value. Important: USD currency must be added as a supported currency to your tenant. Note there is no requirement to make USD your default currency. If USD is not added to your list of supported currencies, returned VM host data may contain discrepancies such as missing VM hosts and inaccurate price related data. To add USD currency, navigate to Administration > IT Asset Management Settings > Defaults > Currency Settings. On this page select Add a Currency and then United States Dollar (USD) from the Currency drop down list. When finished select Add.
Cost/core (WinSvr Std) (currency)	The cost per device core under a Windows Server Standard license. This is the unit cost used for calculating values in this report. The report finds the maintained Windows Server Standard license with the largest number of associated purchases (see Reference license (WinSvr Std)), and then this value is taken from the first available of: The Amount field on the Financial tab of the license properties The Override unit price shown in the Purchases tab of the properties of the reference license The most recent Unit price in software purchases attached to the reference license The default value of 67 (a hard-coded value based on the US$ list price per core). Tip: While this default can give a rough estimation of costs and potential savings, best practice is to use the actual purchase costs or overridden value. Important: USD currency must be added as a supported currency to your tenant. Note there is no requirement to make USD your default currency. If USD is not added to your list of supported currencies, returned VM host data may contain discrepancies such as missing VM hosts and inaccurate price related data. To add USD currency, navigate to Administration > IT Asset Management Settings > Defaults > Currency Settings. On this page select Add a Currency and then United States Dollar (USD) from the Currency drop down list. When finished select Add.
Current Windows Server or CIS license	Displays the name of the license under which consumption on the ESX server (or orphan VM, or standalone computer) is currently covered.
Device corporate unit	The corporate unit that is linked to the device shown in this row.
Device cost center	The cost center that is linked to the device shown in this row.
Device location	The location that is linked to the device shown in this row. Remember: If this device is a virtual machine, and your system setting Update virtual machine location to match host location is set to true, this location may be inherited from the host where the VM is a guest.
Device name	The name of the inventory device in this row. The compliance calculation updates this field with the machine name returned in inventory (matched by several properties, including serial number).
Device role	Specifies the role assigned to a device. Assigning a role may allow for exemptions that limit license consumption for roles specified in some license agreements. Device roles (where permitted by the product use rights on a license) can exempt devices from consuming entitlements on a license to which they are (and remain) attached. For example, some license agreements may grant an exemption for testing devices. For more details, see Allocations and Exemptions. Possible roles include: `Backup / Archive` — This device cannot be started without first restoring it from an archive copy. Typical publisher terminologies include backup, or archival. `Cold Standby / Disaster Recovery` — This device is not currently running, but could be started at any time. Typical publisher terminologies include disaster recovery, cold standby, cold disaster recovery, or failover. `Development` — This device is used exclusively for system development. It does not carry any production load. `Hot Standby / Active Failover` — This device is running, and probably doing work such as mirroring database changes. Typically, this system requires a license, so that it would be unusual to select this role for an exemption. Typical publisher terminologies include hot standby, active, active clusters, mirroring, HA, standby, or remote mirroring. `Production` — Specifies that the device is being used in the production environment, and it consumes license entitlements for its installed software. This is the default value for all newly imported devices, and you need to change it to reflect any other specific role. `Test` — Specifies that the device is being used exclusively in system testing, and does not carry any production load. `Training` — Specifies that the device is being used for training purposes. Most publishers require that this use is exclusive, and may also require that the device is within a dedicated training facility. `Warm Standby / Passive Failover` — This device is on, but is idling and not carrying any production load.
Device status	The condition of this device at the most recent inventory import and compliance calculation. Possible values include: `Active` — A device for which the inventory information is received from an inventory source. `Ignored` — The device that is not managed. An ignored device is not considered in license consumption calculations. Tip: If an inventory device is linked to an asset record, and that asset is given a status of either `Retired` or `Disposed`, this `Ignored` value is automatically set for the linked inventory device. Provided that the inventory device has not been linked to an asset record (which would be extremely unlikely for a VM), this value is editable in the General tab of the inventory device properties.
Device Type	The kind of computer (or other device) represented in this row. Possible values include: `Computer` `Virtual Machine` `VM Host`.
ESX cost (Datacenter) (`currency`)	The cost of licensing the ESX host in this row using the license identified in the Current Windows Server or CIS license column
Exempted device roles	A comma-separated list of the device roles which are exempted from consuming license entitlements in this report. Exempted roles are assumed to be the same for Windows Datacenter and Windows Standard licenses. These exemptions are defined by the Reference license (CIS/WinSvr `edition`) that has the higher number of purchases (and are set on the Use rights & rules tab of the properties for that reference license, under Exemptions).
Hosted in	Shows whether the inventory device is on-premises (the default, meaning the device is within your enterprise), or in a cloud operated by a particular service provider. For some cloud service providers (like AWS and Azure), the Hosted in value is set automatically through inventory. For other cloud service providers, you must make a selection manually.
Hosted in cloud	Indicates `No` if the inventory device is hosted on-premises (within your enterprise). Indicates `Yes` if the inventory device is hosted in the cloud by a cloud service provider. Most inventory devices hosted in the cloud are virtual machines; but this value is available for all inventory devices, because some cloud service providers also rent entire machines (for example, AWS provides dedicated hosts and bare metal instances). This is a convenience column for grouping/filtering inventory devices that are hosted in the cloud. The name of the cloud service provider for each inventory device is available in the Hosted in column.
Host's WinSvr Datacenter VMs	Only for rows where the Device type is VM Host, this shows the number of VMs that are guests on this one host and are also running Windows Server Datacenter.
Host's WinSvr Std and Ent VMs	Only for rows where the Device type is VM Host, this shows the total number of VMs that are guests on this one host and are also running Windows Server Standard or Enterprise.
Host's WinSvr VMs to inventory	For the host shown in this row, this is the number of hosted VMs that meet the following conditions: They have no matching records in the All Inventory page, because they have not been inventoried by an inventory agent They have been reported by vCenter within the last 10 days When identified by vCenter, they were powered on (running). Since vCenter does not report the edition of Windows Server, and the Device role of these VMs is unknown, these VMs are all treated as running Windows Server Standard edition in a Production role and are taken into account in the Windows Server VMs counts.
Latest WinSvr in cluster	For all devices within the current cluster that are running Windows Server, this is the most recent version reported. This can help administrators decide if they want to continue using a legacy license not covered by Software Assurance.
Max VMs/host in cluster	For all the virtual hosts within the current cluster (see Cluster name), this is the largest number of VMs shown as running on a single host when the report was run.
Mean WinSvr VMs/host	For all the virtual hosts within the current cluster, this is the average number (per host) of guest VMs that are running Windows Server.
Operating system	The operating system running on this device. This value is collected from the device inventory record. Value may be blank for rows that do not represent a single inventory device. Editable in the Hardware tab of the inventory device properties (for manually-created records).
Optimal license	The preferred license to apply to the virtual host, stand-alone device, or orphan VM in this row. The optimal license is one of: Microsoft Windows Server Datacenter Core license Microsoft Windows Server Standard Core license Microsoft Core Infrastructure Server Suite Datacenter Core license Microsoft Core Infrastructure Server Suite Standard Core license. Please refer to Comment on optimization to check how the optimal license was assessed.
Overall optimization (`currency`)	The sum of all the saving for all the hosts where the Optimal license is of Standard edition. This is the difference between cost of covering all VM hosts with a Datacenter edition license (Windows Server or CIS), that would be the "easy but expensive" choice, and the cost of covering the VM hosts with the optimal licenses computed by the report.
Peak date (90 days)	The date within the last 90 days when the maximum number of VMs were running Windows Server (of any edition) on the host identified in this row.
Peak WinSvr VMs (90 days)	The largest number of VMs running Windows Server on the current host server at one time within the last 90 days.
Processors	Depending on the Device type in this row, this is: The number of processors in the standalone device (for a `Computer`) The number of processors in the ESX server (for a `VM Host`) The number of processors assigned to the VM (for a `Virtual Machine`).
Reference license (CIS Dtctr)	The Core Infrastructure Suite Datacenter license (maintained with Software Assurance) that has the largest number of associated purchases recorded, and which is used to identify the cost per core for this license type (see Cost/core (CIS Dtctr)).
Reference license (CIS Std)	The Core Infrastructure Suite Standard license (maintained with Software Assurance) that has the largest number of associated purchases recorded, and which is used to identify the cost per core for this license type (see Cost/core (CIS Std)).
Reference license (WinSvr Dtctr)	The Windows Server Datacenter license (maintained with Software Assurance) that has the largest number of associated purchases recorded, and which is used to identify the cost per core for this license type (see Cost/core (WinSvr Dtctr)).
Reference license (WinSvr Std)	The Windows Server Standard license (maintained with Software Assurance) that has the largest number of associated purchases recorded, and which is used to identify the cost per core for this license type (see Cost/core (WinSvr Std)).
Saving for host (`currency`)	When the Optimal license is a Standard edition (whether Windows Server or CIS), this column shows the saving offered by the Standard edition compared with the Datacenter edition of the equivalent license. This value is blank when either: The row does not relate to a virtual host (that is, when Device type has any value other than `VM Host`) The Optimal License is Windows Server Datacenter or CIS Datacenter.
System Center on hosted VM	This column displays `Yes` if, on the current host shown in this row, any hosted VM running Windows Server has a System Center (or Endpoint Configuration Manager) client installed. Having any such VM within the cluster requires that the full cluster is licensed with a Core Infrastructure Server license.
System Center VMs in cluster	Within the cluster containing the host shown in this row (see Cluster name), this is the number of VMs that have a client for System Center or Endpoint Configuration Manager installed. If this number is greater than zero, CIS licenses are required if CIS is in scope.
Value consumed (`currency`)	The cost of the license option shown in this row for the host in this same row.
VMs running WinSvr (any edition) in 90 day peak	The names of all the Windows Server (any edition) VMs in this host at the Peak date (90 days). The report also catches if any Windows Server Datacenter VMs moved onto the host within the last 90 days.
VMs running WinSvr (any edition) to inventory	The list of VMs that meet the following conditions: They have no matching records in the All Inventory page, because they have not been inventoried by an inventory agent They have been reported by vCenter within the last 10 days When identified by vCenter, they were powered on (running).
List of VMs currently hosted (Dtctr)	Shows a list of the VMs that are guests on the virtual host shown in this row, and are also running Windows Server Datacenter edition.
VMs running WinSvr (Standard or Enterprise) currently on this host	Shows a list of the VMs that are guests on the virtual host shown in this row, and are also running Windows Server Standard or Enterprise.
WinSvr Datacenter consumption	The total exposure (for the next annual true-up) of consumption for all rows relating to devices covered by the Windows Server Datacenter license, if the proposed optimization is applied in your environment. Tip: Shows no value if there is no device related to this row for which Windows Server Datacenter is recommended as the optimal license.
WinSvr Dtctr VM hosted (90 days)	In the last 90 days, history shows that at least one VM running Windows Server Datacenter was deployed on this host.
WinSvr Standard consumption	The total exposure (for the next annual true-up) of consumption for all rows relating to devices covered by the Windows Server Standard license, if the proposed optimization is applied in your environment. Tip: Shows no value if there is no device related to this row for which Windows Server Standard is recommended as the optimal license.
WinSvr VMs in cluster	For the current cluster (see Cluster name), this is the total number of inventoried VMs that are not exempted, and are running any edition of Windows Server. This may be thought of as the "Windows Server VM density" for the cluster.

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

Current