A systems administrator is deploying a new business application across the company's virtualized environment, which runs on a 3-node hypervisor cluster. To ensure high availability, the administrator will deploy the application on 8 virtual machines (VMs). 4 of these VMs will be active and placed behind a load balancer, while the other 4 will be maintained as hot standbys. The software vendor's licensing agreement specifies a 'per-instance' model. How many licenses must the company purchase to remain compliant?
The correct answer is based on the 'per-instance' licensing model. This model requires a license for each running copy, or instance, of the software. In this scenario, the application is deployed on 8 virtual machines. Even though 4 are active and 4 are hot standbys, all 8 VMs are considered running instances and each requires its own license. Therefore, 8 licenses are needed. The number of physical hypervisor nodes is irrelevant for this licensing model. Licensing only the active VMs would not be compliant as the standby instances are also running and must be licensed.