Microsoft Licensing Downloads

[Jon Followell]

SoftwareLicensing Services (SLS) provides software licensing, distribution and management services for departments at the University of Florida. SLS also maintains an online listing of software licenses managed centrally at the University of Florida.

Office 365 ProPlus provides multiple free downloads of Office 365 for faculty and staff. Microsoft Student Advantage Program offers free Microsoft Office to Students. Microsoft Campus Agreement software is available to faculty and staff for Home use.

UFIT is pleased to provide access to free copies of Office 365 to UF students, faculty, and staff. As part of UF's campus-wide licensing agreement, the Microsoft Office 365 program allows multiple full downloads of Microsoft Office to personal computers and mobile devices at no charge.

When assessing your Microsoft workloads for migration to AWS, it's important to consider licensing requirements. For Microsoft workloads, we recommend that you take advantage of an AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment (AWS OLA) to assess on-premises or cloud workloads and build a right-sized and optimized roadmap for running workloads in AWS. An AWS OLA will not only make optimized suggestions for the right EC2 instances for your workloads, but it will also look at your Microsoft licensing position. The result will be recommendations for the best path forward to save on compute and licensing costs. An AWS OLA is available for new and existing customers, and is fully funded and obligation-free. For more information, contact the AWS OLA team.

If an AWS OLA is not an option for you at this time, it's still important to understand how Microsoft licensing works in AWS. If you're looking to BYOL, we recommend that you request an updated copy of your Microsoft License Statement (MLS) from your Microsoft licensing purchasing contact. Use this to review what licensing you have and any purchase dates and SA quantities where applicable. For assistance with your MLS, reach out to your AWS representative. Your representative can connect you with a Microsoft specialist.

License included refers to Amazon EC2 instances that include the cost of the license in the compute costs. For Microsoft server workloads, AWS currently offers Windows Server (Amazon EC2, Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts, Amazon EC2 Dedicated Instances, AWS Outposts) and SQL Server Enterprise, Standard, and Web editions (Amazon EC2). These server licenses are offered per vCPU per second with the pay-as-you-go model as a benefit of license included EC2 instances. If the EC2 instance is scheduled to stop, or scales up or down based on demand, you only pay for the licensing for the time the instance is running. With on-demand pricing there are no long-term commitments, which is ideal for future modernization plans.

License included is available for current and legacy versions with Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) available for all supported versions. End-of-support versions, such as Windows Server 2008 or SQL Server 2012, can still be licensed with license included, but you must bring your own media.

There are no software upgrade fees with the license included option. As soon as a new version of the product is released by Microsoft, the new version is made available in the Amazon EC2 console right away for no additional cost above the current license included costs. Most importantly, AWS is responsible for the licensing compliance for license included EC2 instances. This can save a lot of time and effort for you because licensing compliance can be complex and difficult.

The SQL Server license included options offer core-based licenses with no client access licenses (CALs) required. An unlimited number of users can access a license included Windows Server EC2 instance without counting or licensing CALs. Windows Server license included EC2 instances also include two Microsoft Remote Desktop connections for administrative purposes only. If you need additional Microsoft Remote Desktop connections, you can buy Remote Desktop Services User CALs with Software Assurance (SA) from Microsoft and bring them to AWS through License Mobility benefits.

AWS also offers some user-based license included options. Visual Studio 2022 Enterprise and Professional editions (Amazon EC2 and Lambda) and Office LTSC Professional Plus 2021 (Amazon EC2) are charged per user, per month. These include Microsoft Remote Desktop connections for each user. Amazon WorkSpaces also offers Office Professional Plus 2016 or 2019 as an add-on, charged per user, per month.

Using the Bring Your Own License (BYOL) model is a great way to capitalize on your existing investments in on-premises software while benefiting from the efficiencies of the AWS Cloud. BYOL allows you to extend the lifecycle of prior software versions and purchases, and deploy products not offered by AWS as license included. Whenever you bring your own licenses, you must also bring your own media. This means that you must create your own AMI with your own media, rather than using Amazon-provided AMIs. The VM Import/Export tool is free to use and enables you to create your own AMIs. Alternatively, you can use Application Migration Service to create your own media and AMIs.

Because AWS is an Authorized Mobility Partner any Microsoft products with License Mobility that are covered by active SA can be brought to AWS on shared or dedicated tenant environments. Products eligible for License Mobility through SA include SQL Server, SharePoint Server, Exchange Server, Project Server, Skype for Business Server, BizTalk Server, Remote Desktop Services User CALs, and System Center Server. Microsoft products that have License Mobility Rights are not affected by the October 1, 2019 licensing changes made by Microsoft. As a result, products with License Mobility don't have any purchase date or version restrictions. They are eligible for BYOL to AWS as long as the licenses have active SA. For example, SQL Server 2022 licenses with active SA can be brought to shared-tenancy (default) EC2 instances (doesn't required Dedicated Instances) as long as SA is maintained.

Products with License Mobility through SA are licensed on AWS the same way they would be within a virtualized on-premises environment, with the exception of System Center Server. System Center Server licenses have specialized license counting applied when being brought to the AWS Cloud. For every 16 cores of System Center Server Datacenter edition, you can manage up to 10 EC2 instances (of any size). For every 16 cores of System Center Server Standard edition, you can manage up to two EC2 instances (of any size).

SQL Server is the most commonly brought product with License Mobility to AWS. SQL Server core licenses with active SA or subscription licenses (except those purchased through the Cloud Solution Provider, or CSP, program) are licensed per vCPU on shared-tenancy (default) EC2 instances, with a minimum Microsoft licensing requirement of four vCPUs per EC2 instance. SQL Server/CAL licenses with active SA are licensed with one server license per EC2 instance. Plus, all users or devices with access must have the corresponding CALs assigned to them. SQL Server also has a passive failover benefit with active SA and subscriptions. For every active, licensed SQL Server on EC2, you're eligible for a secondary, passive SQL Server instance on EC2 without having to license the SQL Server portion on the passive instance. For more information, see the Microsoft SQL Server 2022 Licensing guide (downloadable PDF) on the Microsoft website.

AWS is an Authorized Mobility Partner (downloadable PDF). If you bring Microsoft products with License Mobility to AWS, you must fill out and submit a License Mobility Verification Form to Microsoft. This form is a brief Microsoft Word document that asks for the following:

You must submit the form to Microsoft directly or through your Microsoft reseller within 10 days of bringing the products to AWS. To learn more about the verification process, see License Mobility through Software Assurance in the Microsoft documentation. The License Mobility Verification Form has a section to provide information about the Authorized Mobility Partner. You can use micr...@amazon.com as the email address, Amazon Web Services as the Partner name, and aws.amazon.com as the Partner website. For more guidance, see Microsoft's Verification Guide for Customers (downloadable PDF) in the Microsoft documentation. To download a copy of the License Mobility Verification Form, see Licensing Resources and Documents in the Microsoft documentation.

The Flexible Virtualization Program offered by Microsoft isn't available on AWS because AWS has been named a Listed Provider* cloud by Microsoft. Microsoft named Alibaba, Amazon, and Google Cloud as Listed Providers as part of the October 1, 2019 licensing changes. Beginning October 1, 2019, on-premises licenses purchased without SA and License Mobility rights can't be deployed hosted cloud services offered by Listed Providers.

Windows Server, Visual Studio, Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN), Windows desktop operating systems, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft 365 apps (formerly Office 365) don't have License Mobility rights granted to them in the Microsoft Product Terms, even if the licenses have SA or are active subscription licenses. As a result, bringing licenses for these products requires dedicated infrastructure: EC2 Dedicated Hosts, EC2 Dedicated Instances, VMware Cloud on AWS, and Dedicated Hosts on Outposts. You must also follow other specific requirements to be eligible for BYOL to AWS. These requirements are a result of changes Microsoft made to the license terms for products without License Mobility when deployed on Listed Provider clouds, effective October 1, 2019. For more information, see Updated Microsoft licensing terms for dedicated hosted cloud services in the Microsoft documentation.

The Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) program was not affected by the October 1, 2019 licensing changes made by Microsoft. As a result, net new Windows Server licenses can be brought through SPLA for customers with their own SPLA licensing, without any purchase date or version restrictions. Any core or processor-based products licensed through SPLA require EC2 Dedicated Hosts, where user-based Subscriber Access Licenses (SALs) can be brought to shared-tenancy (default) EC2 instances. This is because the user-based SALs in SPLA are eligible for data center providers (DCPs) in the Services Provider Use Rights (SPUR).

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