Windows Server 2000 or 2003 licensing question

[JonB]

My company's IT group is practically refusing to install Windows Media Services on any of their servers. My department produces video training DVDs and VHS tapes, but would like to post Streaming WMV files instead.

If we were to buy a PC and install Server 2003 (to get the latest Media version), and streaming video was the only thing being hosted on this server, would we need to buy a CAL for every potential client connect? or does it only apply to clients who connect for file server or application access? This licensing aspect could really raise the cost.

and, while I'm sure they would say NO NO NO!, what Linux video streaming options might be available? I refuse to use Real, but could use MOV. WMV would fit our production facility the best, though.

JonB

 

[mikecel79]

That depends if they are doing authenticated access to the machine. If they are authenticated then generally yes you would need Win2k3 CALs. If it is using unauthenticated access then you would not need CALs. However unauthenticated access does not require CALs. This is kinda a gray area of though since I assume the people getting access to them will be employees of your company. I would contact Microsoft before you do anything. If you don't license this properly you may get yourself and the company into trouble.

I would also like to add since I am a LAN admin that if an employee at my company were caught doing this it would be a fireable offence. Putting up servers without IT consent and running services like this on them is a voilation of policy at most companies.

 

[JonB]

No, this wouldn't be done without their knowledge. They would install and connect it, just not their funding. I am on the plant Cybersecurity team, so that aspect is well known. If they were to do this job, they would want it to be some Quad Xeon Dell with redundant everything, and then they'd complain about their infrastructure costs. This installation would have no "mission critical" applications (just streaming files and static web pages to select those media files), so it wouldn't need the redundancy or reliability of their normal servers. Their biggest gripe will be that I want it to run Server 2003 while they still have NT 4.0 on many boxes. They've got NT 4.0 on boxes with Quad Xeon sockets, but don't have the sockets populated because NT won't use them. Progress moves slowly here.

 

[TGS]

NT 4.0 Server, and Enterprise Edition...?

 

[JonB]

TGS, not sure what you are curious about? Where did Enterprise Edition get mentioned? Keep in mind, I am obviously not a system Admin, but have been told by some of our local Admins that "I know too much" about the company LAN.

 

[djdrastic]

Well unless all my intructors at my MCSE classes were on crack . If you're basically just using IIS + Streaming Server to deliver content to anonymous / an-authenticated clients , then I don't see why you'd need a cli . I'd make sure by calling M$ th0

 

[JonB]

I'll be putting in a "request for non-standard hardware/software" soon. I'll post the results as they unfold.