What is SPLA?
SPLA stands for Service Provider license agreement.
It is a 3-year, pay-as-you-go licensing program that lets service providers and independent software vendors (ISVs) host Microsoft software for their customers.
Use Case Example
The diagram shows a service provider who hosts infrastructure for several customers (e.g., Customers A and B). The provider—not the customers—has the contractual relationship with Microsoft and must file periodic usage reports. Customers simply pay the provider for access and are not responsible for Microsoft licensing audits or compliance reporting. It therefore falls to the service provider to track each customer’s software-license consumption and report those totals to Microsoft on a regular basis.
Main Licensing Rules analysis of Microsoft Windows and SQL Server
Let’s analyze the licensing rules for Microsoft Windows Server: as per Microsoft product terms
Server Licenses (per core)
- Customer may use the server software on a Licensed Server, provided it acquires sufficient Server licenses as described below.
- The number of Licenses required equals the number of Physical Cores on the Licensed Server, subject to a minimum of 8 Licenses per Physical Processor.
- Standard edition
- Standard edition permits use of the server software in one OSE on the Licensed Server.
- Standard edition permits use of one Running Instance of the server software in the Physical OSE on the Licensed Server (in addition to one Virtual OSE), if the Physical OSE is used solely to host and Manage the Virtual OSE.
- Customer may assign additional Standard edition Licenses to the Licensed Server equal to the number specified in 2 above and run the server software in one additional OSE on the Licensed Server.
- Datacenter edition permits use of the server software in any number of OSEs on the Licensed Server.
You can view more details here
Analysis: This licensing models is almost similar to the per core (CAL) Licensing model of Microsoft Windows Server in Enterprise agreement. However there are 3 main differences
- In per core (CAL) for EA- there are min 16 licenses per server
- In per core (CAL) for EA- when you license using Windows Server Standard licenses at the physical host- you get to license 2 VMs instead of 1 VM in SPLA
- Licensing by individual virtual machines is allowed in per core (CAL) in EA but not allowed in SPLA (only host layer licensing)
Let’s analyze the licensing rules for Microsoft SQL Server on SPLA
Per Core (Applications)
For Products under the Per Core (Applications) License Model, Customer must choose either licensing by Physical Core on a Server or licensing by Individual Virtual OSE. The terms for each are set forth below.
Server Licenses (per core) – Licensing by Physical Core on a Server
- Customer may use the server software on a Licensed Server, provided it acquires sufficient Licenses as described below.
- The number of Licenses required equals the number of Physical Cores on the Licensed Server subject to a minimum of four per core Licenses per Physical Processor.
- For enterprise editions, Customer may use any number of Running Instances of the server software on the Licensed Server in the Physical OSE and/or any number of Virtual OSEs.
- For other editions Customer may use any number of Running Instances of the server software only in the Physical OSE on the Licensed Server.
Server Licenses (per core) – Licensing by Individual Virtual OSE
- Customer may use any number of Running Instances of the server software in any Virtual OSE on the Licensed Server, provided it acquires sufficient Licenses as described below.
- The number of Licenses required equals the number of Virtual Cores in the Virtual OSE, subject to a minimum of four License per Virtual OSE.
- If any Virtual Core is at any time mapped to more than one Hardware Thread, Customer needs a License for each Hardware Thread to which it is mapped.
Analysis: This licensing models is almost similar to the per core Licensing model of Microsoft SQL Server in Enterprise agreement with no major differences
ServiceNow SAM Pro Support for SPLA
ServiceNow SAM Pro offers reasonable support for SPLA for service providers, so that service providers can
- Report on license consumption by different customers
- Support on the license compliance rules of Microsoft server products for SPLA
To understand more details on ServiceNow SAM Pro support considering checking this video:
For example: Below you can see license consumption reported for 2 customers ACME APAC and ACME North America for SQL Server product
And License consumed for Windows Server as per SPLA agreeement wherein as per licensing rules for SPLA there is no min 16 core rights per server applied.
In the coming releases, SAM Pro will be releasing more advanced support for SPLA.
How to configure on SAM Pro?
Step 0: Make sure you can tag each customer’s usage by a clear attribute (entity)—such as company, cost center, country, department, or region—and keep those details in ServiceNow. That data lets you cap and report license consumption for every customer according to the attribute(s) you choose.
Step1. If the customer (Service Provider) has both the Enterprise agreement and SPLA agreement
- We need to create 2 different software models - one for SPLA and one for non-SPLA (or Enterprise agreement). You can use condition name on the software model to differentiate between both software models
Step 2. Add the SPLA specific entitlements to the SPLA Software model (s) and the Enterprise agreement entitlement to the Enterprise agreement software model. For both you can use the per core (with CAL) License metric
Step 3. Use entitlement consumption rule on the entitlement as per the entity decided in Step 0. Thereby link the entitlement consumption rule to the entitlement
Read more about it here
Step 4. Change the metric attribute on the SPLA Software Model for Windows, System Center, and CIS software model only
a. Min cores per server: 1 (from 16)
b. Max active OSE per server :1 (from 2- however make this change only for Standard edition-software models like Windows Server Standard SPLA, CIS Standard SPLA- not for Datacenter)
Step 5. Run Recon and check results
