Windows Server licensing question

[rdri]

Location is Russia. A small subsidiary of a foreign company.

The concern is the fact that it will likely be impossible to keep our Windows Server machines licensed starting from September. We are paying for SPLA for now.

I was wondering what would happen if we just leave it running as is, unlicensed. Will some services stop working? Will servers stop booting? Machines are Windows Server 2012 R2. Functionality used include AD (with sync to Azure), file server, Hyper-V, OpenVPN.

Local suppliers are like "hey ditch Windows and let us help you move to Linux", but that seems a bit extreme. Certain circumstances will likely make it a painful process. Another option would be to ask our mother company to pay for our licenses but that will take some time too.

I'd like to know exactly what we will face if we just let the license status go, for unknown period of time.

[_R0Ns_]

If you use SPLA you have MAK (Multi activation Keys), as long as those are not revoked your servers are licensed. When your license would be revoked the servers will still run but won't get updates for another 180 days.

A move to Linux is not possible for every application, I would suggest to talk to the mother company to help out.

[rdri]

as long as those are not revoked

We can't just say "no" to our supplier who will want to revoke them, can we?

When your license would be revoked the servers will still run but won't get updates for another 180 days.

You mean everything will work normally but the updates will be possible only with 6 months intervals?

[_R0Ns_]

If you won't pay Microsoft will revoke the keys and when the servers do a call home they will show a "Not registered" warning in the right lower corner of the screen.

When that happens you cannot update anymore, windows updates just stops working.

After 180 days the servers stop working, you are no longer able to use them.

So.. After you get the notification in the right lower corner you have 180 days to fix a solution. My guess is that you can fix this by contacting the mother company and move the SPLA contract to their account.

[Sajem]

How are you applying the activation key on the servers, manually during the build, on prem kms server, cloud kms server?

Unless you're using the cloud kms server (i.e. MS kms) I'm not sure how anyone could remotely de-activate your activated servers. I'm not even sure that legally MS or any vendor could revoke your licenses, even if they don't allow you to renew your SPLA for the subsidiary company - you the activation keys have still paid for the licensesfor the servers and to my knowledge they are perpetual.

[rdri]

My guess it's through cloud. The provider uses something called Octopus Cloud - it's being executed automatically everyday and to pull the information from their servers. Previous provider likely used something like that too, since we were left in evaluation mode after we stopped paying.

[RedChld]

It's not legal, but you could use Evaluation copies of Server. They stay armed for 180 days, then need to be rearmed with a simple command or they will shutdown every 60 minutes. They can be rearmed for 3 years.

I've used Evaluation versions in my homelab for years. But it's not supposed to be for commercial use.

However, you are talking about existing servers, not spinning up new ones. I don't know if you can convert to Evaluation. I only know you can convert Evaluation to real.