How do Windows Server 2012 CALs work?

Question

I am trying to find information about Server 2012 CALs. Do I need a CAL for each employee that can access the server, or only one for each employee that will access the server concurrently?

For example, say we have a team of 50 people that will be accessing 8 servers using per seat CALs. At any given time of the day only 10 of those people would be accessing those servers. Do I need 10 CALs or 50?

Links to the answers would be greatly appreciated.

Art Bacon · Accepted Answer

You need device CALs to allow multiple users, otherwise you need one CAL per user:  https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/client-access-license.aspx

Device cals only make sense if the users share the device... if they don't then I think you need user cals (50 of them)

How do Windows Server 2012 CALs work?

1 Answer