If I have “Cold” Disaster Backup Recovery Rights for my server software because I have Software Assurance benefits for them, can I apply patch updates to the “Cold” backup?

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There have been some questions in the past about the “Cold” Disaster Backup Recovery Rights Software Assurance benefit and what it provides. Some of the questions have been about what “Cold” means vs. “hot” and if it is “Cold,” can it be turned on for patch management and testing. The answer to this is stated directly in the Product Use Rights document (the document that tells you what your usage rights are for software purchased through Volume Licensing) under the Software Assurance section.

In this quarter’s Product Use Rights document, you will find these answers about “Cold” Disaster Backup Recovery Rights located on page 62. Here you will see:

2. “Cold” Disaster Recovery Rights.

For each instance of eligible server software you run in a physical or virtual operating system environment on a licensed server, you may temporarily run a backup instance in a physical or virtual operating system environment on a server dedicated to disaster recovery. The product use rights for the software and the following limitations apply to your use of software on a disaster recovery server.

· The server must be turned off except for (i) limited software self-testing and patch management, or (ii) disaster recovery.

· The server may not be in the same cluster as the production server.

· You may run the backup and production instances at the same time only while recovering the production instance from a disaster.

· Your right to run the backup instances ends when your Software Assurance coverage ends.

As you can see, the “cold” server can be turned on for limited software self-testing and patch management. So the answer to the question above is, “Yes, you can turn on your cold disaster backup recovery server to manage patches so that you are up to date in case of an actual disaster when you would need to utilize the disaster recovery server.”

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman
Microsoft US Senior Manager
Small Business Community Engagement
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights