Software Assurance is a comprehensive Volume Licensing program that includes a unique set of technologies, services, and rights to help you deploy, manage, and use your Microsoft products more efficiently.
The benefits of Software Assurance include but are not limited to:
1.New version Rights: Upgrade each Microsoft product license that is covered with SA(Software Assurance) to the most recent version at no additional cost
2. License Mobility: Allows you to deploy certain server applications on-premise or on cloud, without buying additional licenses
3. Disaster Recovery: Provides licenses for backup servers dedicated for disaster recovery
And many more…
One of the most Important benefits of Software Assurance that customers use is – License Mobility. License Mobility provides customers great flexibility to manage licensing on premise (in heavily virtualized environments) or on a cloud environment (AWS or Azure- using Azure Hybrid Benefits).
Please note that License Mobility is not applicable for Windows Server, but is applicable for a list of software such as SQL Server, Exchange Server etc. List of Eligible Products are mentioned here
As License Mobility is not applicable to Windows Server each server in a server cluster must be fully licensed for peak capacity at all times.
ServiceNow Software Asset Management Support
ServiceNow SAM , automatically applies the benefits of License Mobility when customers create active Software Assurance entitlement records.
Software Assurance can lead to a fewer number of rights consumed in heavily virtualized on premise environments or on the cloud.
License Mobility Support (On Premise)
Figure 1 Cluster Infrastructure
In clusters configured for dynamic VM movements, the number of rights consumed when Software Assurance is active is typically less. As shown in Figure 1 ServiceNow SAM applied licenses to the Virtual machine as 4 *4 =16 Licenses (V-cores=4).
As these Virtual machines are free to move across any host in the cluster License Mobility allows the customer to consume rights equal to the number of cores on the Virtual machines.
Figure 2 Rights Consumption when Software Assurance is active
If Software assurance is not active in this example, the number of rights required increase as shown below. This is because the virtual machines, will now need to be licensed for all hosts on which they can potentially reside. Rights required= 8+12+12+8= 40 (this is because 2 VMs can live on 2 Hosts – due to Host affinity and 2 VMs can live on 3 Hosts).
Figure 3 Rights consumption when Software Assurance is not active
In a similar manner, ServiceNow SAM support license compliance for Windows Server Datacentre Edition by licensing all physical hosts in the cluster for peak capacity, irrespective of Software assurance being present or not. This is due to the fact, that Windows Server does not support License Mobility with or without Software Assurance.
License Mobility Support ( On Cloud)
ServiceNow SAM supports automatic application of License Mobility benefits on Cloud. For example, automatic application of Azure Hybrid Benefit support allows benefits such as 1 SQL Server Enterprise license on premise can consume 4 SQL Server Standard on MS Azure if Software assurance is active.
In addition, licensing rules such as On premise licenses purchased after 1 Oct 2019, are not eligible to be deployed on dedicated hosts on the cloud – are also applied automatically to generate remediation actions with workflow
As shown in Figure 4, Cloud special rights are applied for this instance on Azure. Although the Virtual machine has 16 cores, only 4 core licenses have been consumed for SQL Server Enterprise
Figure 4 SQL Server Licensing on Shared Azure Virtual Machines
Additionally, for AWS Dedicated Hosts on cloud, ServiceNow automatically applies the licensing rules as stated by Microsoft and will generate remediation workflow in case of purchases made after 1 Oct 2019 without active Software Assurance.
Figure 5 AWS Dedicated Hosts Licensing on ServiceNow SAM
