Licensing of multiple versions of same software for same consumer

If several versions of the same product run in different virtual machines on a physical host or within the same operating system instance, several license requirements are created and accumulate on this consumer. They can be consolidated "side-by-side" using the corresponding option that must be selected for the software products that should be consolidated. 

Example: SQL Server 

Such consolidation does not require license models of the various license requirements to be identical. The license model metric ensures that consolidated license requirements are correctly taken into account when the quantity of licenses required for the highest version of the software within a downgrade chain is calculated. For this purpose the host's license model is used.

Within the side-by-side consolidation, the requirement for the highest version of the software is the final one.

If the side-by-side consolidation is not enabled, the license requirements are not based on the highest version of the software. All license requirements are entitled separately. This provides the possibility to license multiple software versions that use different license models, although they are run together on the same physical hardware (directly or on virtual machines).