SQL Server Licensing Summary & Guidance

Microsoft SQL Server is considered one of the most complex and expensive business applications to license. In today’s #DoMoreWithSnowServices article we look into why the product is challenging, and how Snow’s Professional Services team can help. Mike Rossouw, a Principal Licensing Consultant at Snow Software, shares the “need to know” information to get you started.

Aside from the operational risks, insufficient planning of your business licensing needs will undoubtedly expose you to legal, financial, and reputational risks. At the time of writing, there are four main editions of SQL Server available and utilized.

1.   Enterprise Edition – Commercially Available.

2.   Standard and Web Edition – Commercially Available.

3.   Express Edition – Freely Available.

4.   Developer/Compact Editions – Freely Available.

At a basic level, SQL Server is licensed on a per core basis for physical Servers (standalone), or the physical VMware ESX host (part of a cluster), then you need to license each physical processor in the server with a minimum of 4 SQL server core licenses per processor, or the total number of cores on the server, whichever is the higher of the two.

If you are licensing the virtual server, the rules are slightly different. The minimum number of cores is based around the virtual server rather than the processors. You have to license a minimum of 4 cores per Virtual Machine (VM), or the total number of cores allocated to the VM, whichever is the higher of the two. If your VM's are part of a load balanced cluster, in other words they are free to move from one physical host to another within the same cluster, then you will have to make sure that the licenses you are assigning to the VM's have active Software Assurance (SA).

SQL Server licensing starts to get even more complex when applying licenses at the cluster level with features such as DRS (VMware’s load balancing feature 'VMotion'), High availability (HA), and Disaster Recovery (DR) features such as passive failover.

We often find that companies don’t have the required in-house knowledge or resources available to effectively plan out these SQL Server requirements. This is where Snow Software’s expert Professional Services team can assist and support you to optimize your Microsoft licenses.

For more information, please contact the Snow team or visit our website from the link below.

Snow Professional Services: https://lnkd.in/eJdvjaYF