Seamless datacenter management

System Center delivers a simplified datacenter management experience to keep you in control of your IT—whether on-premises, in the cloud, or across platforms. It builds on the experience and depth of the previous versions, and you can take your management capabilities even farther with Azure security and management capabilities, giving you visibility and control of data and applications that live across multiple systems from a single solution.

Core licenses are sold in packs of two (a 2-pack Core License) and each processor needs to be licensed with a minimum of eight cores (four 2-pack Core Licenses). Each physical server, including single-processor servers, will need to be licensed with a minimum of two processors and 16 cores (eight 2-pack Core Licenses). Additional cores can then be licensed in increments of two cores (one 2-pack Core License) for gradual increases in core density growth.

Learn more about purchasing System Center

Core-based licensing. System Center server management licensing is based on the number of physical cores on the servers under management, consistent with the Windows Server model.

Consistent licensing model for server management and client management, respectively. Core-based licenses for server management. User-based or operating system environment (OSE)–based license for client management.

Licenses required only for endpoints being managed. No additional licenses are needed for management servers or SQL Server technology used in System Center.

Learn more about System Center licensing

System Center server management licenses have two editions differentiated by virtualization rights only:

• Datacenter: For managing highly virtualized servers.
• Standard: For managing non-virtualized or lightly virtualized servers.
  

There is no differentiation between the types of workloads you can manage with either edition. The only difference between the editions is the number of operating system environments (OSEs) that you can manage when all physical cores on the server are licensed. Datacenter edition allows for the management of any number of OSEs (virtual machines or Hyper-V containers) when all physical cores on the server are licensed. Standard edition allows for the management of up to two OSEs (virtual machines or Hyper-V containers) when all physical cores on the server are licensed. Datacenter and Standard edition both allow for the management of any number of Windows Server Containers.

No. The System Center Server Management components are part of an integrated offering to create and manage private cloud environments. They are available only as part of System Center Standard and System Center Datacenter server management licenses.