Microsoft finally did something right. The released an online calculator designed to calculate the cost of running the different versions of Microsoft Windows Server in a Virtual Infrastructure. You can use this tool to determine which version of Windows is going to be the most cost effective for your organization.

This is nice because when talking about virtualization with customers, the topic of Windows virtualization almost always comes up. This will help illustrate the different pricing options.

The only problem with this tool is that it’s only available online. Therefore, I used the online tool as the basis for an Excel spreadsheet that does the same thing.

The spreadsheet can he downloaded here for free:

Windows-Virtualization-Calculator-v.1.1.xls 47K

EDIT: 1/25/2007 - I cleaned up the workbook so that it no longer warns of Macros in the workbook. Please note, there are NO Macro’s in the workbook. In Excel if you create a macro, and then delete it you’ll continue to get a warning about macro’s until you open the VBA editor and delete all modules. For more on this read this.

EDIT: 2/13/2007 - Fixed some formulas.

EDIT: 3/26/2007 - 110 Downloads so far for March! If you download it and like it, leave a comment.

EDIT: 4/9/2007 - I deleted the old version since it had errors and people were still downloading it.

Tags: Microsoft, Virtualization, Windows Licensing