I was reviewing the new Microsoft Product Terms for the language regarding creating and storing instances, which I expected to find under the universal license terms section. I checked both the July 2015 and August 2015 versions and found nothing. Excerpt 1 below is from the April 2015 Microsoft Product Use Rights (PUR), which happened to be the last PUR published before the new Product Terms were introduced in July 2015. As you can clearly see this was part of the universal licensing terms, and starting with the new Product Terms this language is suddenly missing. When I searched through my library of Microsoft volume licensing briefs I found the November 2013 volume licensing brief titled "Licensing Windows Server 2012 R2 for use with virtualization technologies", and I found the language shown in excerpt 2 below.
I am perplexed this key language is missing from the new Product Terms, and I do not know if it was an oversight or intentional by Microsoft. Please make sure to address this in your upcoming agreement renewals with Microsoft.
Excerpt 1
Creating and Storing Instances You may create and store any number of instances of the software on any of your servers or storage media solely to exercise your right to run instances of the software under your server licenses or your Windows Enterprise license terms.
Excerpt 2
Storing Instances With a licensed copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 you can make any number of copies of the software and store them on any of your servers or storage media without requiring an additional Windows Server licenses. You can also store instances on a large storage area network (SAN) or store instances on your servers without needing additional licenses for each instance.