Eventually I got some person at a Microsoft Store felt bad about the whole thing and took 2 days to get a number for a rep a CDW who could get me the price. That rep didn't have the price, but took my information after a 15 minute call and promised to get it to me. When she did days later, she couldn't give me a final price because she forgot I needed a user CAL and a remote access CAL. When I went to make the final purchase, she said oh, actually we can't do it because Microsoft won't sell the Windows 7 license anymore only Windows 10.

The whole process made me feel like I was losing my mind.

Nobody knows what Microsoft wants to do, they have Acquired Nokia but nothing goes well.

I'm not sure why you're trying to do that.

Windows 7 cannot run Hyper-V. You can install the Hyper-V Manager on Windows 7, but that only requires Pro or Ultimate. [1]

Client Hyper-V was only added in Windows 8, and you only need Pro. [2]

[1] https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/f0f1dc3d-9...

[2] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2011/09/07/bringing-hype...

Oh. Then I agree with you that Microsoft screwed up the licensing -- but it's a different screw-up.

Windows 7 Ultimate is just like Windows 7 Enterprise, except for the virtualization rights. With Enterprise, each license allows 4 concurrent VMs. With Ultimate, you only get one.

The original idea of Ultimate was to be a consumer version of Enterprise. You didn't have to go through a salesman. You could just buy Ultimate on Newegg or Amazon.

However, Microsoft crippled Ultimate by putting in the 1-VM restriction. Considering how much Ultimate cost, this was a really cheap move on Microsoft's part.

Might it be easier to just get an OS-level subscription to MSDN ? I got one of those a few years ago for rsync.net and it was quick and easy to purchase ... and then we had everything.

Certainly more expensive to get MSDN than a single OS license, but it's not that expensive ...

MS Partner on the other hand is licensed for internal-only production use.

Oh, right.

Yes, we just used it to test clients against rsync.net.

Recommended (MSDN, that is), if you're in that situation...

And perhaps Microsoft shareholders are beginning to feel as if they might be losing their capital soonish... This sounds like The End.

This is the sort of thing that helped kill Sun, although the circumstances were sufficiently different it wouldn't play out in the same way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11601146 (especially when much of the competition is entirely free, e.g. AWS doesn't run on Windows).

Same thing with Xerox not all that long ago, they had a near death experience because the salesmen got so much pointless process larded into what they had to do to do their jobs. Note also one of the newer HP CEOs who upon getting his job said that one of his top priorities was streamlining the sales process.

At some point, the hyperbole starts looking like a plausible assessment.

The Microsoft Windows ecosystem is a god send for those wanting to enforce single sign on, roaming profiles and group policy to control things deploy Chrome, 7-Zip or all manner of apps straight to the desktop or lock down access for say the demo room machines but give full access to engineering notebooks and enforce things like password policy, mapped network drives, etc.

It honestly just works and is fantastic in practise for companies wanting to enforce good IT policies with 10+ employees (in comparison try doing the above with Mac OS X + Mac OS X Server - like pulling teeth).

However Microsoft's licensing is absolutely fracking byzantine.

* I first need a server license - is it per socket or per core?

* Then I need my desktop licenses - do I need Pro or Enterprise? Or heck, maybe Ultimate only has the regional language options I need?

* Then I apparently need a fracking Client Access License for not only Windows Server to Windows Desktop services but for god damn DNS and DHCP services too! Like seriously MS - are you kidding me? So every iOS or Android device which pops up on our Windows DHCP/DNS needs a CAL apparently.

Now the whole cluster fudge above would be barely tolerable for any well funded startup or company IF Microsoft made buying these licenses easy.

If the above nightmare sounds bad however, just try getting licensed for it all and ensuring you're compliant.

It's seriously, a real damn shame because Microsoft Windows Server + Windows desktop is fantastic. When put together it really does work beautifully. It's just such a shame that MS seems to shoot itself in the foot consistently when it comes to figuring out their licensing.

Only if you have Device CALs. If you are using User CALs then each user is licensed for as many devices as they/you want.

We have good sales company (in the UK) with a really great sales REP. We moved with him when he changed companies a couple of years back. We call him up, and we have an open license the next day. That said there are some pretty aweful MS partners.

Except for the forced reboots because their OS still can't completely update itself at run time.

Enterprise Linux also has the feature of updating the kernel on-the-fly. The infrastructure for it has been open-source, and anyone could build a similar service for themselves if they wanted.

In fact, with Nano server, Microsoft is trying to go that direction too -- the less you have running, the easier to avoid reboots.

But the real solution is trying to be reboot-tolerant by having a slight bit of redundancy, I would think. Uptime matters more for pet/snowflake servers than for cattle....

What you go on to describe sounds a lot like kexec, and a kexec is the same thing as a reboot for everything on a computer except the hardware. The new kernel during a kexec starts with a freshly-booted state.

What I meant was – and perhaps I wasn't clear enough – updating the kernel in-memory, while it runs so that even your userspace apps notice nothing - except perhaps a few fractions of seconds of time slipping by - and continue running while the kernel they're running on top of is patched with new code.

This has been possible for a while on Linux. It began with, IIRC, Ksplice as a college-project, then a startup, then bought-out by Oracle for Oracle Linux, then independent efforts at similar implementations by both Red Hat and Suse, which eventually got merged together and mainlined into Linus's tree.

At home I run Arch Linux, and I do updates almost every day. Usually my uptime can easily be measured in weeks.

At work I have Windows 7 on my laptop. I have to restart my laptop twice a week at a minimum, because every tiny fucking update requires a restart. And if I don't then it nags like a little bitch every 2-4 hours and breaks my concentration. And if you take too long then it forces the update and your work is lost. I hate having to close all my apps every 2 days and wait for ages while it restarts. From a user's perspective, Windows is the shittiest desktop experience available in a corporate environment.

</rant>

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model...

Because OS X Server is complete crap. As is ARD. Not even Apple uses OS X Server to manage their devices. I believe they use JAMF's Casper.

It used to be an optional tier of Windows Intune (now known as Microsoft Intune), which they have since killed (stupid decision, IMO). However, you can just directly join a Windows 10 (Pro?) system to Azure AD, Enterprise is only necessary for things like DirectRoute, you may not be able to block the Windows Store entirely but you can restrict people from using non-whitelisted applications IIRC.

If you want to manage software updates, deploy applications, Microsoft Intune is still a great option (even includes endpoint protection for PC's) at $6/usr/mo. It's just too bad they got rid of the $10/usr/mo tier that had the Windows Enterprise license.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/quarkx...

The reality is that for your corporate/enterprise-fully-entrenched-fiefdom-building management person easily buying things or having someone read documentation and configure something is just not compatible with how they operate. They need net 30/60/90, sales drone wine, dine & golf, "is this in the Gartner Magic Quadrant?", a drawn out high-touch sales engagement and consultants they can blame.

Risk averse is the name of the game and it doesn't matter if it makes the business too slow to compete because a middle manager will never be held directly accountable for doing exactly what every other politics-first middle manager is doing. You want to sell to enterprises? Get in with the developers but be prepared to provide all of the above to the people actually making the purchasing decisions.

I'm sure any individual middle manager would give you a very reasonable explanation for any of these behaviors. If you're operating in a political environment and you don't play the game you're going to end up the sucker sooner or later. How do you fix the problem when you need to be part of it to have any leverage to fix it? The only thing you have power to do in that situation is behave ethically or unethically (depending on who's definition of unethical you're using of course).

I'd like to think that startups that grow enormously will prove over time that slow enterprise-y corporations are at a huge disadvantage and that will slowly make it's way into business schools. But part of the reason risk averse behavior takes hold is because the stakes get higher as you get larger. Today's spectacularly successful startups are tomorrow's enterprises unless they make a deliberate effort not to be.

You were likely talking to the wrong people. You need to go through bizspark[1] if you're a startup and you'll end up with a super-helpful dedicated Microsoft representative and lots of free stuff. It's been never anything but super in my experience to work with Microsoft as a startup.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/bizspark

If they didn't, then it is absolutely Microsoft's fault.

It's the same with Cisco, and really a lot of stuff in the enterprise space.

Plebes don't get to talk to Microsoft employees.

EDIT: I will add that I have worked for a few such resellers of various enterprisey tech companies. Your partner account buys you a hotline to competent vendor support engineers. They aren't reading scripts, take you at your word for the troubleshooting steps you've already tried, are happy to work a problem systematically with you, and will also readily admit that a product is defective and grant an RMA or even make a bug report, collect diagnostic logs from you, and tell you when a fix is slated for release. It's amazing.

IBM, in the mainframe era, was very good at this. It was IBM policy that if you called anyone within IBM sales with a problem, it was the IBM employee's job to get you to the right people. All IBM salespeople had a little printed pocket book of phone numbers within IBM, a directory of contacts for various types of problems.

"Hi, Microsoft, I'd like to give you money but fuck me if I can figure out which SKU or how much." "You did it wrong, sir. You should have called this other number. Or you should have Googled it. But the last thing you should have done is called me, have a nice day. <click>"

I ran into this almost ten years ago trying to price the various SKUs we needed for Visual Studio. It was appallingly ridiculous how much time I spent on that, in contrast to just going to a web page, comparing features, click a few radio buttons, click "Buy", sorted. It was the last place I've worked since that I've had to beg Microsoft to take my money. Now they just plain don't get my money.

Signed, A very disappointed ex-MSFT employee and ex-shareholder

1) I guess if the switch its connected to gets reset, the older version of the OS cannot reconnect automatically.

2) accounting software will make you buy strange things

Don't let confirmation bias and an MS persecution complex make you put up a wall to legitimate concerns.

That's why you aren't getting favourable comments.

"We failed to sell you something you wanted, and it's your fault."

Besides, BizSpark is solely for startups, not for established SMBs, who would quite reasonably expect to be able to sign up for Enterprise by searching for "Enterprise".

Is this too obvious, perhaps?

Putting the responsibility on the customer to find the right set of keywords - in Google no less! - to purchase copies of enterprise software is bizarre.

Shouldn't Microsoft make that clear then? If I wanted Windows 10 Enterprise for a business, I'd search for "windows 10 enterprise", follow the link to "Windows 10 Enterprise for your enterprise business - Microsoft"[1], and go to the "Buy>How to buy"[2] page. There is zero mention of BizSpark in that process as far as I can see.

It's also non-obvious from your link that BizSpark includes Windows 10 Enterprise. I had to download the "Products by benefits level" Excel sheet to be sure, and it appears to be limited to five people regardless.

I understand that Microsoft's enterprise licensing typically involves going through a reseller, but Microsoft certainly could be doing a better job pointing people (esp. small businesses) in the right direction. Even if I go through to "Contact a Windows Solution Provider"[3], it defaults to searching for UK and an 8km radius (accurate enough), sort by "Most relevant". Top 5 results:

* German-language result

* Scandinavian/Nordic-language result (doesn't look like Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian to me. Possibly Finnish?)

* English-language result, but located in the Netherlands

* French-language result

* Italian-language result

Maybe these companies can help me, or maybe they are the "wrong people" to whom you refer. Following what I would see as the obvious path to try and purchase Windows 10 Enterprise, I'd have no idea how to tell the difference.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/WindowsForBusiness/windows-f... [2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/WindowsForBusiness/buy [3] https://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-GB/search?type=companies&k...

if ($number_of_clients * $client_license) > ($number_of_processors * $processor_license) buy per-proc, else buy client licenses.

Per-processor licensing is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30K (per CPU). Standby servers and processors aren't counted toward that total. Clients are any machines or users that directly or indirectly (like via a web app) use the database. That last point is important because sales reps at vendors who's software requires SQL Server will sometimes be ignorant of it or will lie and when you get audited you're the one left holding the bill.

This.

I don't know if this is still the case, but a few years ago I bought an MSDN subscription, and it took weeks. I could never figure out why they made it so difficult, nor why they forced me to go through partners. Just add a subscribe button on your own website, let me pay and be done with it. How you handle distribution is not my business (and I reckon distribution is not an issue anymore, since I think nobody chooses to have CDs delivered instead of downloading what they're interested in).

Again, this was a few years ago. I hope by now they have fixed this process, because it was completely broken.

I think Windows Intune also comes with Enterprise licensing as well, but I'm not certain.

When you're ready to spend big bucks on Azure, please let them know.

I am talking about the process you have to go through to buy Windows licenses and licensing in general with Microsoft. I literally had to take a exam at one point on Microsoft licensing to be eligible for a program of theirs.

I wasn't complaining about the price, or available options, I was complaining about how hard they make it to actually give them money, see how much things cost, and to be clear about exactly what licenses you need.

There is a noticable delay when I click to focus on the search bar, and often I have to retype because I click and go to start typing in my search term and lose the first few characters.

Almost always, when I search for an email in the Android app, it just hangs and even if I leave it to sit for minutes...

It's not about trust in motivation at this point. It's about trust in competency.

We'd have migrated to Google, except the system administrator had booked a holiday for two of the weeks.