Gabe Knuth - All Comments

re: Oracle VDI gets the Geek Week treatment...finally!

Matthias Pfuetzner — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:20:09 GMT

Gabe,

thanks for this (finally, it seems, the Geek in you wants more, we've been telling you so for a long time... :-) ) report.

I might help Benny (an old friend of mine) with the long-distance ALP tests, I'm also here in Darmstadt, and am connecting my Sun Ray @ Home to the Oracle Sun Ray Server in the Oracle (former Sun) Langen (Frankfurt, German) )office via:

Darmstadt:

DSL (Deutsche Telekom)

Frankfurt

London (Oracle European Sun Ray VPN Gateway)

New York

Chicago

Denver

Broomfield (the old Sun Network <-> Oracle Network are connected in central United States)

Back to Germany via three additional hops (sadly, no location info available to me)

Langen.

And, I can work very decently over here... Though the Sun Ray and it's server are less than 10 miles apart, the network connection spans many thousand miles...

Matthias

P.S.: Traceroute shows from me to the VPN gateway:

30.339 ms 29.775 ms 29.915 ms

and from the Sun Ray Server to the VPN gateway:

252.319 ms 252.048 ms 252.213 ms

So, add those... :-)

re: OnLive loose ends: Are they using VMware? Dedicated hardware? Custom licensing? Plus, are they on Microsoft's acquisition radar?

Randy Cress — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:28:48 GMT

Random thoughts: VMware tools is running along with other vm related processes and the hardware devices match VMware. OL could be using VMware because it allows the interaction between the host and VM through the VMCI interface (intervisor?)

OL code was written by former MS engineers and the potential acquisition of OL could be very similar to the buyout of Calista in 2008 to bring Hyper-V back on track. I could see the same thing happening with OL since they are enhancing cloud desktop technologies for: multi-touch drivers, KMS optimization, application-whitelisting improvements, data sync, GPU passthrough.

The MS goal would be to have end-users running apps and games designed for the MS platform over native iOS and Android code. SkunkWorks style..

re: OnLive loose ends: Are they using VMware? Dedicated hardware? Custom licensing? Plus, are they on Microsoft's acquisition radar?

Danny Allan — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:34:11 GMT

The most frustrating part of all is the unwillingness to disclose how this is being offered.

Living every day in the cloud hosted desktop world, I know that the only way they can offer a cloud Windows 7 desktop is to use dedicated hardware. Sometimes I get the "desktop not available" message from my iPad with OnLive, so maybe this is what they are doing? However,if that is the case, why don't they just come out and say that? Wouldn't OnLive (if not Microsoft) want the market to know that they are in compliance?

re: OnLive loose ends: Are they using VMware? Dedicated hardware? Custom licensing? Plus, are they on Microsoft's acquisition radar?

Martin Sheppard — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:22:01 GMT

OK, here's a theory on how the licensing might work.

For Windows remember that they run games on the Windows platform for the gaming side of their business and there is no standard Microsoft license to allow them to do that, so they must have negotiated a special deal with Microsoft. It makes perfect sense for Microsoft to work out a deal that works economically for the game side of the business (so long as they didn't consider them too much of a competitor for their own gaming platform). Given that there are so few companies doing what OnLive is doing and also considering that there is no way to do it on a small scale, it makes perfect sense for Microsoft to keep this as a custom deal rather than enable that particular model in their standard licensing line-up.,

Now it is possible that Microsoft never considered that OnLive might offer a remote desktop when they drafted this deal and so never excluded that usage in the terms of the deal. If so then that's OnLive's Windows licensing covered, potentially at zero cost because they probably already have to pay for gaming. It seems unlikely that Microsoft would make such an omission, but it is possible and it would certainly explain why neither side will talk about it. Also if that is the case then it is a pretty gutsy move by OnLive when it might put Microsoft offside with respect to licensing, so if they have done it they had better have a pretty long-term deal for Windows for the gaming side of their business.

Office could just be licensed under a standard SPLA agreement. I'm not sure how they would make the economics work in this case, especially for the free desktops, but at least it is possible to do. Maybe they don't expect to make a profit out of these services, but rather just use them as a marketing opportunity to bring people in to their gaming platform.

All just speculation - I've go no idea if that's what is actually happening and I'm probably wrong, but it is the only explanation that I can come up with that makes any sense.

re: OnLive loose ends: Are they using VMware? Dedicated hardware? Custom licensing? Plus, are they on Microsoft's acquisition radar?

Wonderdog — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:32:16 GMT

Bloody annoying isnt it?

Definately insider dealings going on between Redmond and Onlive.

The crazy thing is, Microsoft are snubbing the massive market of resellers who driving thier income by outright refusing to provide SKU's that enable this. The market for DaaS is ready to boom - and the ONLY thing stopping it is Microsofts medievel licensing. The technology is there, the business case is there, the delivery expertise is there.

I'd be interested to hear what the EU monopolies commission or similair would think about this kind of business practice. Basically - Microsoft are actively preventing companies from offering a competing service by artifically controlling the usage of thier industry standard product via a non-technically impeded, licence only restriction, seemingly in order to promote a single preferred vendor? Good luck defending that if it ever went to a monopolise commision hearing.

I just dont get it.

re: OnLive loose ends: Are they using VMware? Dedicated hardware? Custom licensing? Plus, are they on Microsoft's acquisition radar?

Brian Madden — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:20:53 GMT

Let me just say how F'ing pissed off I am at Microsoft about this. I am an MVP, and I asked my MVP contact people how in the world OnLive could be legally licensing this, and they said, "We can't comment on how customers might be doing this, and we can't speculate."

Ok, fair enough. So then I asked them, "Ok, forget OnLive. Can you please get me in touch with a licensing expert at Microsoft who can explain how I would set up my own DaaS offering based on Win7 enterprise? I want it to be free, or $9.99 per month. But I don't want customers to have to own their own Win7, VDA, or SA. I want to provide everything as a provider. I'd be interested in exploring this offering for both physical and virtual hosts. Please tell me which Win7 licenses I have to buy in order to do this?"

And their response? Nothing! Not a goddamned thing!! I've been an MVP for 8 f'ing years, and I can't even get those assholes to answer a single simple question. F them. I'm so over the MVP program and Microsoft in general. Windows and their stupid licensing monopoly world can't die soon enough.

re: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 – Hyper-V solution overview

M. Goldman — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:15:39 GMT

You can use vtCommander (http://vtcommander.com) to manager Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server Core with Hyper-V role enabled.

re: Breaking down OnLive Desktop: Why this is not the desktop virtualization solution you're looking for.

lodani — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 13:58:40 GMT

I had a look into program files and found traces of vmware. So, no dedicated hardware of blades I guess.

https://twitter.com/#!/LoDani/status/163257270237536259

re: Breaking down OnLive Desktop: Why this is not the desktop virtualization solution you're looking for.

pdegroot — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:20:24 GMT

Tal

Actually, GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, Teamviewer, etc. are fine.

There are actually 3 rules at work here.

1. If you are the "primary user" of a physical device with a Windows Professional or Enterprise license, you can access that particular device from anywhere.This rule applies to OEM, retail, and volume editions of Windows 7 Pro.

2. If you are not the primary user of that remote physical device, you must have the identical version and edition of Windows on your local device.

(Office Pro Plus and Standard, sold through volume programs, have comparable rules for 1 and 2 above so this covers the Office scenario as well as Windows)

3. In order to access virtual machines, you need either Windows license plus Software Assurance (SA) on that Windows license, or a Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) subscription. These must be virtual machines owned by your organization. Hosters are not permitted to resell access to virtual Windows in this way.

So, applying these rules, we get the following results.

A. As long as you use GoToMyPC et al to access a Windows PC for which you are the primary user, which is the way people usually use these products, you're fine. The "primary user" language covers you. But unless OnLive is reserving you a personal, physical desktop in their datacenter, they're not fine.

B. Since OnLive Desktop is using Windows 7 Enterprise, everyone who accesses it must have purchased SA for Windows on their device, or must have a VDA subscription. Enterprise is only sold through volume licensing and then is available only on devices covered by SA. Note that only about 50% of large companies, and maybe 15% of small ones, are in this situation, so if you don't know, don't assume you're covered. And even if your company has such licensing in place, it's not inheritable or user-based. Every device used this way requires corporate volume licenses or subscriptions for Windows and Office. Have you told your CFO to cut a check for the licenses you need for your iPad?

C. OnLive can't host virtual Windows machines for other people to use. Even its own staff require SA on their Windows licenses or VDA subscriptions.

There may be some special deal that OnLive cut with Microsoft on this, but I don't see how Microsoft can let this go. If I were an enterprise buyer today, I'd be demanding the same deal, or threatening to shift as many users as possible to OnLive's "free" Windows and Office. I deal with customers who spend up to $20 million a year on these licenses, so believe me, there's a big incentive to go the OnLive route.

Paul

re: Breaking down OnLive Desktop: Why this is not the desktop virtualization solution you're looking for.

Rich Brumpton — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:45:39 GMT

I think you guys are missing a scenario that has a significant possibility of being true in some form:

OnLive and Microsoft might have a custom contract that gives rights not typically seen.

This would not be a huge surprise to me, they must have gotten some level of buy-in from MS to offer games running on Windows in the first place. Instead of coming at this from a reseller perspective, this came from a gaming and entertainment perspective initially, and as a licensee that is allowed to do "something" to make XBox and PS3 games playable over the Internet is going to have to negotiate some heavy-duty contracts will all the players involved.

Now that OnLive has showed some "success" (in whatever form, maybe not profits, but uptake at least) they are leveraging these contracts with extensions to cover Windows and some set of Office applications at a minimum.

We may be seeing a new type of MS partner (and disruptive competetor to Citrix et al.) emerging here, looking more like Amazon S3 than a corporate datacenter, but geared directly at providing platforms and applications to end consumers. How long until they have self-service app subscriptions for additional apps or start adding workgroup features or more through Office365.

All that being said, it sounds like there is a ways to go before they get there, and a lot of optimization that will have to take place.

Or maybe MS is just planning on buying them if "Windows365" and "XBox365" really have a market ;)

re: Breaking down OnLive Desktop: Why this is not the desktop virtualization solution you're looking for.

Landon Fraley — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:08:47 GMT

Acquisition target? If what they've done is legal (or is simply an awesome proof of concept) might be kinda interesting to Microsoft. Call it Xbox OnLine. Would the VDA requirement still apply to Microsoft's usage?

re: Breaking down OnLive Desktop: Why this is not the desktop virtualization solution you're looking for.

Brian Madden — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 01:48:20 GMT

By the way, I asked all my contacts at Microsoft if they knew how OnLive is licensed, and they all basically said the same thing, which is that they can't comment on how specific customers are doing licensing.

re: Breaking down OnLive Desktop: Why this is not the desktop virtualization solution you're looking for.

Tal Klein — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:54:25 GMT

Paul:

You said: "You cannot remotely access an instance of Windows 7 on a remote machine, physical or virtual, unless your device is also licensed for the identical edition of Windows 7, which iPads obviously aren't."

That can't be right. That would mean that technologies like (gulp) GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, etc. that had iPad apps which allowed you to access your home PC remotely from your iPad were essentially enabling you to violate your MS license, no?

re: Breaking down OnLive Desktop: Why this is not the desktop virtualization solution you're looking for.

Gabe Knuth — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:20:03 GMT

Looks like 32-bit Office Standard 2010, but only Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

I'd love to get a Microsoft response to this (and an OnLive one, for that matter) so they can clarify this. I'm more hopeful that the answer can contribute to community understanding of licensing, rather than exposing some illegitimate licensing issue.

In the meantime, maybe our BriForum licensing guy, Nathan Coutinho, can take a look at this scenario.

re: Breaking down OnLive Desktop: Why this is not the desktop virtualization solution you're looking for.

pdegroot — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:36:26 GMT

I disagree that they have the licensing correct. You cannot remotely access an instance of Windows 7 on a remote machine, physical or virtual, unless your device is also licensed for the identical edition of Windows 7, which iPads obviously aren't. This is especially true of Windows 7 Enterprise. You can't even buy an OEM or retail license for this edition of Windows, which makes it impossible for anyone to access a remote instance, physical or virtual, of this product without having a volume agreement. You would need to purchase a VDA subscription ($100 a year) through that agreement. As a Microsoft licensing writer and analyst I have asked OnLive for details of their licensing; I'm interested to see that Gabe was no closer to getting a straight answer than I have been. In my view, it is extremely dangerous to use this offering. Properly licensing an iPad to access a remote instance of Office (can you find out what version of Office it is) running on Windows 7 Enterprise will cost at least $370 for Office Standard (available only through volume licensing) and $100 a year for VDA. If your company is in an Enterprise Agreement and you do any work with OnLive, your company could be facing a true-up bill that could exceed $1,300. The OnLive EULA says you are responsible for paying any third parties for the software you use, so Microsoft has the right to demand the names and contact info for all OnLive Desktop users and could demand hundreds of dollars in licensing fees from each person on that list. If they find that you work for a firm with an Enterprise Agreement, your employer could get the bill, for up to $1,300. That would look great on your expense account--$1,300 for software for an online gaming site.

Will Microsoft do this? They have to. They cannot let one company offer free Windows and Office without getting serious pushback from hosters who play by the rules, and whose businesses could be seriously hurt, unless MS is planning to make hosted Windows 7 and Office free for everyone. I doubt that they'll do that with the two businesses that generate 95% of their profits.

Paul DeGroot

Principal Consultant

Pica Communications

"Solving the Microsoft Licensing Puzzle"