Do I Need to Purchase TS Licenses for W2K & XP ProMachines?

[John R. Bennett]

Do I need to purchase TS Licenses to activate Terminal Services Licensing
even though all of my clients are either W2K Pro or XP Pro? I know that
with a W2K Pro or XP Pro client I shouldn't need to purchase additional
Terminal Server licenses but if so, how would I activate Terminal Services
Licensing without it expiring first? I believe that W2K Server gives you 60
days to activate the licensing so clients may continue to connect but if I
already have the required clients, can I or do I need to do this to be able
to continue using Terminal Services?

Thanks in advance,

John Bennett

 

[Vera Noest [MVP]]

I assume that you run W2K on your Terminal Server?
The only thing that you *must* do is to install and activate a TS
Licensing Server. You do not have to buy TS CALs and you don't
have to install any TS CALs on the LS.
Once the LS is activated, it will start to issue free TS CALs to
your W2K Pro and XP Pro clients.

If you run Windows 2003 TS, you do need TS CALs for all clients.

Follow this article and just skip the part about installing TS
CALs.

237811 - How to Activate a Terminal Services License Server and
Install CALs Over the Internet
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=237811

 

[John R. Bennett]

Thank you for the information. My only other question would be would the
Licensing expire after 90 days even though it was installed? I just want to
make sure I don't get any surprises once we start using it. And yes, it is
running on a W2K server.

Thanks again,

John Bennett

 

[Vera Noest [MVP]]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but here's the story:
the *grace period* (which is the period that a TS will work
without any LS) will end after 90 days. When the grace period is
over, no client can connect. Game over

When you install and activate a LS, all of your W2K and XP Pro
clients will get a TS CAL. These TS CALs will have an expiration
date and will expire after 51-89 days. 7 days before the end of
the expiration date, the clients will automatically renew their TS
CAL and receive a new expiration date.
The above mechanism ensures that TS CALs are not permanently
issued to clients and get lost when the client is discarded. This
feature was implemented in SP3.

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

You are corrent, XP Pro and 2000 Pro don't require you to
purchase extra TSCALs for them, since the license server
will issue them free TSCALs. However, this only occurs if
the license server is activated. Just make sure the
license server is activated and you should be good to go.

-M

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

As long as you have the activated TS licensing working,
then the licenses issued will be permanent and will not
expire if they are used every so often.

-M

 

[Gary Thomas]

If I understand this correctly then... The activation and
license of a "License Server" is a different license from
the licenses that comes with XP Pro and W2K Pro. Sp
before the 90 days are done you have to activate
the "license Server" because even with the licenses that
come with XP and W2K will not allow you to acccess
terminal services.

 

[John R. Bennett]

But wouldn't I need to purchase some type of TS Licensing to activate it?
In the past, I have purchased Open Licensing Agreements but that was to
cover my non-W2K Pro and XP Pro clients. I don't recall seeing an option to
activate the licensing without supplying a licensing agreement from MS.

Thank you,

John Bennett

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

Typically, you would have to install licenses, but in this
scenario, you don't need to.

Check out this link:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-
us;306622

-M

 

[Matthew Harris [MVP]]

Yes, these two things are very different. You must
contact Microsoft in order to activate your TS licensing
server for it to properly issue TSCALs to connecting TS
clients. No licenses come with XP Pro or 2000 Pro, except
the license to use the software. The TSCALs that you
install into the TS licensing server are bought
separately, and they never come with the OS. The TS
licensing server will issue free TSCALs to 2000 Pro and XP
Pro, but these free TSCALs are from the license server,
and do not come with those OSes.

The 90 day grace period is where the license server has
issued temporary TSCALs to your clients, and after the 90
days are up, those TSCALs expire and you can no longer
connect to your terminal server, since the license server
rejects the connection.

-M