ServiceDesk

I have 200 workstations that I need to manage with 4 "workers" and have 50 "Contacts" who open tickes within the HelpDesk (Service Desk in 7.1).  We will be running SQL 2008 Standard (or express if it is possible) With the information that I have provided how many SQL CAL's would I need to have?

I am not sure if this Deployment Solution is the right forum for this query.  May be Helpdesk Solutions/ServiceDesk forum are more suitable :)

I did see other posts about both Deployment and Helpdesk so I thought this was the place to post.  I don't see any other sepcific forums to post to.  Can you assist me in where I can go to post my question?

Thank you.

Endpoint Management > Forum > post this for both Helpdesk Solutions and ServiceDesk :)

Modified to include the ServiceDesk forum.

I believe (and hopefully someone else will also chime in here, or a call to tech support will help) that you would only need 2 or 3. 

You can run ServiceDesk with a service account and that is the only account that actually ever talks to the DB directly. A second CAL would be a good idea since there are some things that you might do as an admin such as close orphaned incidents, etc. A third would be if there is another admin or if you want to run SMP as a different service account since you would need a management server to handle the licenses for ServiceDesk.

I think that would cover it but a second opinion would be a good idea.

Licensing is either per user or per device.  You can decide what is least expensive, but Microsoft cares who is submitting data to the database, not who actually is writing the data to the database.  10,000 nodes submitting information to the NS and the NS writing information to the DB does not equal 1 device (the NS) or 1 user (the service account with SQL rights).  It equals 10,000 devices.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=sql%20cals&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CEcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.microsoft.com%2Fdownload%2F1%2Fe%2F6%2F1e68f92c-f334-4517-b610-e4dee946ef91%2F2008%2520sql%2520licensing%2520overview%2520final.docx&ei=7ysnT7XAMaGCsgKC69ixAg&usg=AFQjCNGs-YSd4sSGaqXphKDL6njuUeB-zw

Good to hear. I stand corrected. See what happens when you live in an enterprise world with enterprise licensing for too long! 

Mr Clemson,

If I understand correctly if I have 200 workstations that are being managed by Deployment Console and 50 users who are submitting tickes in Service Desk and then 4 workers who are receiving the tickets by SQL CAL's should be based on the larges number, i.e. the 200 work stations.  We would get 200 Device CAL's which would cover all workstations AND the users/workers on those workstations.  Is this correct based on your explination?

Thank you for your help.

Kyle Horan

Deployment Console is 1 CALas the Deployment console is talking to the 200 machines. Not the 200 machines to the database directly 

That's not correct according to Microsoft.  Clearly Altiris is middleware or "multiplex" as defined by the document I referenced above.  I recommend per processor licensing for SQL servers since so many SQL databases are representing middleware systems like SharePoint, Altiris, Symantec Endpoint Protection, and other systems.  Any time clients report data to, or users submit data to, a server running web functions, which then turns around and puts the data in the SQL DB, this is middleware or "multiplex" according to Microsoft, and each client reporting data or user submitting data requires a license.

To avoid this enormous mess we just use per processor licensing.

All this being said, you could choose to do per user or per device licensing.  If you want to see which of these three options is cheapest, you can do the math.

For example, suppose you have three SQL servers, each supporting SharePoint, Altiris, and SEP.  Your older SharePoint SQL server is 2 dual cores, your Altiris SQL server is 1 eight-core, and your SEP SQL server is 1 quad-core.  You would need 4 processor licenses for your three servers.

Then suppose that you are a manufacturing firm with three shifts, so you have 300 workstations/servers but 700 employees.  There are no mobile devices.  Here you could have 300 device CALs total (device CALs are valid for all SQL servers in the environment) or 700 user CALs.  Obviously the inverse could be true -- you could have an environment with 100 employees but 200 devices, since they all have mobile devices.

With these numbers in hand, multiply your processor cost by the number needed, and extend the same for device CALs and user CALs.  Then choose the least expensive, keeping things like expansion plans in mind.