Re: EC2 alternatives

On Jul 9, 2008, at 10:26 PM, Chris Sears wrote:

On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Michael Sheehan wrote:

How do you see it as being unenforceable?

Microsoft holds the service provider (not the customer) accountable for making sure the proper licenses have been purchased. Bring your own license is basicly the honor system. How could Amazon make sure cusomters weren't using stolen/pirated/warez CD keys? It couldn't without checking each Windows OS image before it started it up and even then there's no way for Amazon to know if a CD key is legit or not.

There are ways to do this that are 'legitimate'. OEM manufacturers do it all the time with WinPE/SYSPREP. It's just a big hassle and you have to know what you are doing. We did it with an earlier (pre-CloudScale) product that focused on VMware. You could 'bring your own license'. The biggest impediment to this is that there are multiple flavors of Windows / Windows Server that use *different* licensing schemes, so you wind up in a position where you have a perfectly valid Windows Server license, but you can't install it onto an image because of the media they used. But again, as you point out, no good way for Amazon to enforce that you installed a legitimate license. It could someone else's Volume License Key for example.

Microsoft should really fix these kinds of issues.

Put another way, would GoGrid allow me to upload my own custom Windows image (using NT 4.0 or Server 2008 for example) just like Amazon allows EC2 users to run custom AMI's? Of course not.

Yep, if they hold the service provider accountable. Hopefully they will wise up soon. I suspect they will as they try to figure out their own cloud strategy.

There are a lot of other factors that also come into play, like licensing other MS apps/servers that run on top of Windows (sql server, biztalk, sharepoint, exchange), the many different licensing programs available under MS licensing (retail, open, ea, select, spla), and the different VM licenses grants allowed under the higher-end editions of Windows. In short, it's a complicated mess. I'm sure your lawyers can fill you in on the additional details if you're interested.

Yes, it's a mess, which also means an opportunity for people who can help to solve it. A non-trivial task on Windows.

--Randy

Randy Bias, Founder, CloudScale

(877) 636-8589, randyb@cloudscale.net

blog: http://neotactics.com/blog

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Cloud Computing" group.
To post to this group, send email to cloud-computing@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
cloud-computing-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
To post job listing, send email to jobs@cloudjobs.net (position title, employer and location in subject, description in message body) or visit http://www.cloudjobs.net
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.ca/group/cloud-computing?hl=en?hl=en
Posting guidelines:
http://groups.google.ca/group/cloud-computing/web/frequently-asked-qu...
To invite your colleague http://groups.google.com/group/cloud-computing/members_invite
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---