If you have Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter edition you will have the right to downgrade software bits to any prior version or lower edition. This applies no matter what downgraded version you plan to install. A server with 4 * 16 core AMD processors has 4 processors. A server with 2 Intel Xeon E5 processors with 10 cores each has 2 processors. Processorsīoth the Standard and Datacenter edition cover a licensed server for 2 processors. As with WS2012, the two editions are identical technically, having the same scalability and features … except one. There aren’t any huge changes to the “core” editions of Windows Server (Datacenter and Standard). In this post, I’m going to cover the licensing for “core” editions of Windows Server.
Remember that once released, you will be buying WS2012 R2, even if you plan to downgrade to W2008 R2. Microsoft released the updating licensing details for WS2012 R2 several weeks ago. That’s the job of your reseller or distributor, so ask them. As usual, I am not answering any questions about licensing.
