NT PDC licensing

Matt Pavlovich mpav at algx.net
Wed Dec 12 09:20:14 GMT 2001


My understanding of CAL's, is that you only need to purchase a Cal if
you are connecting a workstation to a server and the versions of Windows
are different, or for every user that connects to a server over the base
number of allowed clients.  If you have one Win2k server, and one Win2k
workstation, you would not need a CAL, as it is included in the purchase
price of the products.

ie.. Windows 2000 Server, and WinNT 4.0 workstation would require a
Win2k CAL.

Win2k server and 4000 Win2k clients requires 4000 CAL's.

Of course, the licensing model changes daily.. so consider this only a
base guide.

With Samba as the PDC and file servers, you should not have to buy any
CALs as you have already licensed the workstation licenses.  It would be
very bold of Microsoft to attempt to charge licenses for anything that
speaks the protocol.

Matt Pavlovich
Allegiance Telecom, Inc.

Adam Killian wrote:
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> I was wondering if anyone has any experience with Micorosft's licensing policy wrt samba.
> I want to use an NT PDC and some BDCs to do my username/password authentication, and use Samba for all my file/print servers.  Obviously, I will need licenses for each NT server, but if all I am doing with it is authenticating users, do I need a CAL for each user?  This is going to be a 2500 user installation, so it makes a big difference to the total cost.  If I do end up needing CALS, I will have to use some other authentication mechanism.
> 
> As I understand it, I can configure Samba to act as a PDC, but not as a BDC. Since this will be a mutli-site deployment, that won't work.  I guess that leaves me with NIS or LDAP.  Does  anyone have any reccomendations/suggestions/horror stories?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Adam Killian
> akillian at footlocker.com




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