Andy - The license is not ambiguous.
You are required to have a valid license for each copy of Vista you install
to a licensed device.
2. INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS. Before you use the software under a
license, you must assign that license to one device (physical hardware
system). That device is the “licensed device.” A hardware partition or
blade is considered to be a separate device.
a. Licensed Device. You may install one copy of the software on the
licensed device. You may use the software on up to two processors on that
device at one time. Except as provided in the Storage and Network Use
sections below, you may not use the software on any other device.
So from this section it is clear that each install to a licensed device must
be covered by its own unique license. But note that the act of installing a
copy of Vista is done under a license that is tied to that licensed device -
this section does not dictate if the environment ON that licensed device
where you are installing the copy of Vista into is actually on the bare meta
(as in a local install) or into some form of virtualized environment (such
as VmWare or Virtual PC, and of course this may even be one of many VMs
being installed on a VDI environment.)
So you now refer to the section on IF the version of Vista you have is
allowed to be installed on a Virtualized environment (remembering that that
environment is running on a device that you are assigning the license to -
the "licensed device")
so 2 f. Use with Virtualization Technologies. You may use the software
installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated)
hardware system.
Allows he version of Vista you have to be installed in a virtualized
environment on a licensed device - this doe not mean additional installs -
it is just allowing you to place the "bits" within a VM on the licensed
device as a choice from on the bare metal.
The only product that includes licensed rights to use more then one install
for a single License is the Enterprise Edition under the terms of a Volume
License Agreement with Software Assurance coverage - this allows up to 4
additional uses of the license in virtualized environments on the licensed
device.
If you extend you analogy to a large VMWare VDI instance - do you believe
that for one copy of Vista Ultimate you can run up 40 VMs all running Vista
for 40 users to RDP too - of course not you need 40 Vista licenses.
So if you are not a VL customer (with SA) using Enterprise Edition it is
still one license per install (virtual or otherwise) and that license is
assigned to the physical "licensed device" that is executing the environment
that the installed OS is running in (bare metal or VM)
--
Mike Brannigan
"andyd" <andyd@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A81051AE-A68B-4F57-8F9E-9FDF65749C0D@microsoft.com...
> Clearly something is not working properly in regards to this. License
> clearly states that I can install Vista Ultimate in a Virtual machine
> within
> a licensed desktop. But it would appear that someone forgot to turn this
> on
> in the code.
>
> I've gone back and forth with activation support but they have no idea
> what's going on. Should I not be able to install Vista Ultimate in VM
> Ware
> and have the running within my desktop which has also been activated with
> the
> same Vista Ultimate key?
>
> Here is the license text...
>
> USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES. You may use the software
> installed
> on the
> licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system
> on
> the licensed device. If
> you do so, you may not play or access content or use applications
> protected
> by any Microsoft digital,
> information or enterprise rights management technology or other Microsoft
> rights management
> services or use BitLocker. We advise against playing or accessing
> content
> or using applications
> protected by other digital, information or enterprise rights management
> technology or other rights
> management services or using full volume disk drive encryption.
>
> And yet, I've run only into issues. I now have to call in whenever I
> reinstall Vista on my main desktop regardless of the fact that my hardware
> hasn't changed since I first ran Vista in January. I'm also unable to
> activate within a virtual machine as it says the key is not genuine.
>
> What gives?
Linear Mode
