For your Windows Server at TransIP, you can use various types of VPS. The price of the Windows Server licences depends on both the VPS type and the number of vCPUs (cores) of the VPS. This is due to how Microsoft licenses Windows Server: based on the number of CPU cores of the underlying hypervisor.
Because Windows Server licences are therefore not based on the actual number of VPSs on a hypervisor, but only on the number of CPU cores in the hypervisor, it follows that the more VPSs that can run on a hypervisor, the more effectively the licence costs can be spread across those VPSs. This is why the difference between dedicated and shared CPU cores on VPSs is important.
With dedicated CPU cores, the cores are reserved for your VPS. With shared cores, you share the hypervisor’s CPU cores with other VPSs on the same hypervisor. As a result, proportionally far fewer VPSs can run on a single hypervisor with dedicated CPU cores than with shared CPU cores. This, in turn, means that with dedicated CPU cores, the cost of Windows licences is spread across fewer VPSs. For this reason, we calculate Windows licence costs per platform as follows:
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VPS: The platform is set up so that VPSs with dedicated and shared cores run within the same hypervisor cluster. Licence costs are spread across the entire cluster and therefore across a larger number of VPSs than with PerformanceVPS, but a smaller number than with BladeVPS. The price is calculated per vCPU and, thanks to this flexible setup, is roughly half the licence price of a PerformanceVPS.
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BladeVPS: A larger number of VPSs share the same hypervisor. This allows us to keep licence costs low, and you pay a fixed Windows licence price per VPS, regardless of size.
- PerformanceVPS: The CPU cores are reserved individually for each PerformanceVPS. As a result, significantly fewer PerformanceVPS instances can run on a single hypervisor than on the other platforms. Windows licences are therefore roughly twice as expensive as on a regular VPS and are licensed per two cores.