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optician
Asked: 2010-03-26 03:15:33 +0800 CST

Do you have to have CAL licences for all user of openVPN on a windows server? [duplicate]

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Possible Duplicate:
Can you help me with my software licensing issue?

My company is currently considering buying a new server to use as a shared VPN filestore.

Looking at the licencing, does this mean that we would have to have a CAL for each person who wanted to connect via openVPN?

Does this mean it would be better to use XP/win 7 in this situation?

Or Linux?

windows-server-2008 vpn windows-server-2003 openvpn cal

1 Answers

  1. Being as OpenVPN is Open-Source software (hence the 'Open' in the name) it does not follow Microsoft CAL rules as thankfully Microsoft doesn't own or control OpenVPN. You would need your standard amount of CALs however for any Microsoft software interaction to be legal. The OpenVPN usage handling the transport between the client and server would make no difference.

    Think of it as this... OpenVPN extends the range of your LAN to remote users. If you'd need a CAL for the user to use a Microsoft resource if they were on the LAN, then they'd need a CAL to use over the VPN.

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