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I have a general question about how a company usually acquires the installation media needed to install software associated with volume licenses that were purchased or that they are entitled to with their Enterprise Agreement. Our company currently uses a MSDN Ultimate subscription dedicated solely to an individual whose only job is to acquire software and licenses. They do not use any of the software themselves but they essentially use the MSDN license to download the iso or installation setup program to hand off to our desktop/server support team to install. Each install that is used in production has a licensed that is purchased either through a volume license or through our Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft. There seems like there should be a better way of doing this other than using a $10,000 subscription to do so but I know of no other solution.

SYarman
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    MSDN subscriptions are licensed on a per-developer basis. If you have a person who is distributing it to multiple users, that would be a license violation. – jamieb Dec 20 '12 at 14:13
  • @syarman You do know that MSDN is meant to be used on a per developer basis and for development only, not production use by several people, right? As ewwhite says in their answer below, you should be using volume licences, which are managed via a website that controls both licence *and* media distribution for the business. – Rob Moir Dec 20 '12 at 14:22
  • Yes, I am aware the MSDN license is per developer and not to be used in production. The installs are used with the keys that are acquired through our volume licenses we purchase through a reseller. We purchase licenses for all production installs, the MSDN is used to download the software associated with the volume license that was purchased. – SYarman Dec 20 '12 at 14:35
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    Yeah, you're supposed to/expected to use the Volume Licensing portal mentioned in ewwhite's answer. – HopelessN00b Dec 20 '12 at 14:38
  • Ok, this makes much more sense than to use a MSDN subscription. Just looking for confirmation that this same site could be used to download software associated with our Enterprise Agreement we have with Microsoft as well. The motivation is to get the MSDN Ultimate subscription that is currently allocated to someone in license management back to a developer where it seems to have more value. – SYarman Dec 20 '12 at 14:47
  • Whoever you're buying your licenses from should be able to answer these questions for you, FYI. – mfinni Dec 20 '12 at 21:13

1 Answers1

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Typically, volume licenses will be linked to a portal or account login for the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center or Microsoft Next Generation Volume Licensing websites.

If your organization doesn't have an account established, please do so. You should be able to link to your licenses and see the relevant installation media downloads.

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ewwhite
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  • Thank you this was very helpful in understanding how this process works. Is this same site used to download software/aquire keys that our company may have access to through our Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft? From my understanding our Enterprise agreement gives us access to a certain number of licenses and we then purchase volume licenses for anything that does not come under our Enterprise Agreement. – SYarman Dec 20 '12 at 14:38