How do you track MS SQL Server licensing?

carolai asked a question.

November 7, 2017 at 8:00 AM

I would be pleased to get some advice how to detect incorrect Microsoft SQL Server licensing.

We have a lot of MS SQL server installations in a mixed environment. Some MS SQL servers are licensed by installation plus additional CAL's, other MS SQL servers are licensed per processor or core.

Let me use one example:

Two servers A (4 cores) and B (8 cores) have installed SQL Server 2012 Standard.

Server A has assigned a SQL Server 2012 Standard license per installation

Server B has assigned a SQL Server 2012 Standard Core license with only 4 cores.

The installed application on both servers is listed always as SQL Server 2012 Standard.

SRS cannot detect SQL Server 2012 Standard Core.

The license metric in that application is set to "based on installations", I can select only one license metric.

When I now check the license tracking report, then license requirement for SQL Server 2012 Std is always set to 1.

For server A the report lists requirement 1, coverage 1 -> compliance 0, that's ok

For server B the report lists requirement 1, coverage 1 -> compliance 0, but this server would need a 8 core license, is licensed only with 4 cores and therefore is underlicensed.

Do anybody has the same situation? How do you handle this to find the installatios that are not licensed correctly?

Is there perhaps a way to set the installed application to SQL Server 2012 Standard Core ?

We are on SLM 8.2.2.

Thank you for any hints.

Community Manager (Flexera Software)
9 years ago
Hello Carola, thanks you for your questions. Let me see if I'm able to assist you here and hopefully provide a solutions you can work with. With regards to SQL Server installations you indeed have to possibility to apply different license metrics. You should be able to use the license tracking report to determine if particular core based licenses are assigned correctly based on a minimum requirement. Let me show you this via a couple of steps/screenshots. Below you can see that I have assigned SQL core licenses to different servers that have the SQL Enterprise Server installed. Please note that the last server (COMPUTER01686) is the only that is licensed correctly, the first three server do not have enough cores assigned to each of them! Looking at one of these three servers, you will also notice that it is partially covered. License Tracking per Computer Report By using the License Tracking per Computer Report and adding the correct criteria I ended up with the following results: I have used the column selector to add specific important columns to create this view. Please let me know if this answers your questions and if this is something you can work with?
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- carolai
  9 years ago
  Hello Robert, My concerns regarding SQL Server applications were based on our mixed environment and the different possible license metrics. I kept the original license metric "Based on installations", because I thought otherwise the license tracking and compliance will show me underlicensing for SQL Server installations, licensed per installation (Server/CAL). But after your reply I did a test today and changed the default license metric for SQL Server 2012 Standard application to "Based on processor cores" and a minimum requirement of 4. Despite already existing licenses it was possible to change the default metric. I expected to see correct coverage for the computers licensed per cores and a underlicensing for the computers licensed per installation. But the compliance now was calculated good. For the former mentioned example, license tracking now shows: Server A (licensed per Installation) requirement 4, coverage 4 -> compliance 0, that's ok Server B (licensed per Core) requirement 8, coverage 4 -> compliance -4, that's ok So I also changed the default metric for the other SQL Server Standard/Enterprise versions and now have a good SQL Server license tracking report. Many thanks Carola
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