ABSTRACT
Cloud servers are in general created and started from precon gured VM images, snapshots, or cloned from existing virtual servers. e source of the VM images
could be the Internet community, some open source images, some commercial paid appliances, or even the image library of the cloud provider. Additionally, the cloud server customer may create their own image or VM based on his soware library or self-developed sources. Overall, it must be clari ed if the operating system used is properly licensed for usage within the cloud. Open source operating systems and freely available Linux distributions could be the starting point to create a virtual server. In this case, the administrator needs to check in case only noncommercial use is covered by the license. e same considerations apply to third-party soware installed in the VM image or into the running virtual server. e problem with cloned servers is the fact that all the license keys are copied and therefore used multiple times for each running virtual server instance. is could be forbidden or problematic based on the design of the license activation built into the soware by the vendor. A good example is the Windows operating system that, based on the used version, relies on features such as licensing servers and regular license checks for system activation over the Internet. In such cases, a post-install con guration must change the license key or activate/integrate the newly started cloud server into the license system of the soware vendor.
