If you set up a server to just provide shares to users, are you still limited by the number of CALs you purchased? In other words, if I have a box running Server 2003 (not on a domain) and I want to use it as a stand alone server (no web, no mail, no terminal services and no file server services running) with just drives mapped to shares with varying degrees of NTFS permissions, am I still limited by the number of CALs? I haven't found any documentation that states where the number of netbios connections to a server is dictated by the number of CALs. I've seen where it applies to Active Directory or Terminal Services but not just plain ole '\\server\share' or Net Use commands. If a server is configured in 'per server' mode, and no more CALs were purchased other than the standard 5 that comes with Server 2003, what happens if 6 netbios connections are attempted from 6 different machines even though all 6 users have accounts on the server?

It all depends on how you structured your CALs. Did you get per user or per device? Win2003 CAL Guide: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sam/lic_cal_win2003_server.mspx Basicllyy, just try to get a CAL for each device that will access each server (yes, access usually means network shares and yes you need 2 CALs if you access 2 different servers). Think of it this way... If Microsoft ever came to your place of business and audited you and found out you weren't legal on CALs, who would be the one taking the blame? If you're not sure, contact Microsoft - they're usually happy to answer questions like that...