Forum Discussion
Defender for Endpoint Server standalone license
As of September 1, Microsoft has removed the Defender for Endpoint on Servers P1 and P2 licenses, forcing on-premises customers to use Azure ARC / Defender for Cloud! Onboarding to Azure ARC is no...
Can I ask what your solution was? I have a client that has legacy Defender for Endpoint Server licenses and I am not clear on what to transition them to in the CSP. Microsoft support has been not been able to provide an answer for me yet.
Unfortunately, there is only the option of licensing Defender for Cloud. For example, via Azure Arc onboarding. Microsoft has ignored customer and partner feedback that there is continued high demand for the Defender for Endpoint Server P2 stand alone license for on premises environments. According to my information, it was also removed from new signed Enterprise Agreements.
Our / Costumer solution was to switch EDR for Servers to a different product away from Microsoft.
Hi Keith, do you have any information about if Arc is required for Defender for Server Plans? From what I’ve gathered from Microsoft Pages it is recommended but not required. (for additional Defender for Cloud based recommendations) We have some customers running defender on Server with the "old" License Defender for Endpoint Server. We now get the information that we cannot renew this license.
We try to figure out if we need to onboard all Servers to Azure Arc now or if there still is a standalone license and onboarding via Powershell is still a valid choice.
Thanks in advance, cheers Felix
- Keith_Powell
Microsoft
Your information may not be complete. There is no "Defender for Endpoint Server P2" per se--you should ask your Microsoft account team about the 'Defender Endpoint Servers' license (SKU #1NZ-00004) to see about making your purchase.
Also, FYI, the Microsoft Defender for Servers Plan 1 is fundamentally the same thing as "Defender Endpoint Servers". There are 2 core differences: (1) 'Defender Endpoint Servers' DOES NOT have the flexibility to use Microsoft Defender for Cloud or the Microsoft 365 Defender portal; and (2) MDE for Servers is paid for 100% each month--whether you use it or not. MDS P1 or P2 are paid for during EACH hour that they are used--if your server is 'down' then there is no cost paid for MDS. So, you should be able to achieve the functionality that you want, at a similar (or lesser) price point, depending on your actual usage. Something to consider, anyway. small update that i worked with MS azure support recently and can confirm doing the onboarding with Azure Arc is what makes this possible now days. It does mean an extra agent installed for Arc/Log management, but things did go smoothly once I did that onboarding and then configured defender for cloud to leverage P1 server licensing. It adds additional complexity if all you want is Defender EDR on your servers, but I can see the benefits to leveraging more Azure features now that they are available via Arc.
