SQL Server licensing is a highly complex area. Many factors are in place that determines the licensing costs, and often companies do not have the full overview of all these factors leading to not being compliant or paying too much for licenses.
Often licensing costs are calculated once a year for the yearly true-up, and at that time a full overview of the SQL Server landscape must be present. Often this is done manually or from manually maintained Excel sheets.
SQL Server CAL licensing is simple, but if having Software Assurance, it is usually cheaper to use core-based licensing. The core-based licensing model is highly complex, and is based on the following factors:
- Is the server physical or virtual?
- If the server is virtual, is it more beneficial to license the whole host instead of each virtual machine?
- What if virtual machines automatically migrates between hosts (e.g. using vMotion), what effect will that have on the license cost?
- Is the SQL Server an Always On passive node? If so, it does not need a license, but what about if using mirroring? Or if there is a database on the passive node that is not a part of an Availability Group?
- What if the SQL Server is empty? Will it require a license? What if it contains a single database that is never used?
- What if there are multiple SQL Server instances on the same server? What if the instances are a combination of Standard- and Enterprise Editions?
- Should SQL Server instances used for UAT be licensed?
- Can an Enterprise Edition be used for test- and development? Can an MSDN subscription cover the license?
- Should a passive node Always On node be licensed if it is readable? What about if it is non-readable, but backups are taken on the node?
- Should a license be paid if the SQL Server software is part of another product e.g. SCCM? What if the included SQL Server hosts other databases?
- What if the server has 16 cores, but SQL Server is only using 12? How many core-licenses are needed? How are the rules different between Standard- and Enterprise Edition?
- What if a SQL Server contains both primary- and secondary Availability Group nodes?
- How should a Developer Edition be licensed if used in production?
- How does hyper-threading affect licensing? How are the licensing rules for hyper-threading different between physical- and virtual servers? How are the licensing rules different if using host-based licensing instead of pr. server based licensing?
- How does the number of sockets affect licensing?
- How are Standard Edition licenses handled if placed on a host that is having Enterprise core-based licensing?
- Why are 4 core-based licenses required if the server only has 2 logical processors? What if having 2 servers with 2 logical processors each?
- What are the license differences between SQL Server versions?
- How to license SQL Server Workgroup Edition, Datacenter Edition, Parallel Computing Edition and Business Intelligence Edition? What if the instance editions are mixed with other editions on the same server?
- How is licenses handled when using legacy SQL Server virtual clustering?
Performance Store handles all of the above automatically. E.g. if a SQL Server vMotions to a different host, the licensing costs are immediately calculated and an alert is send if the license costs are increasing. This information is available in the dbo.all_servers_license_info table.
Performance Store indicates where licensing costs can be optimized, e.g. if full backups are taken on the primary node and therefore requires the whole server to be licensed.
Performance Store delivers license information in the most simple and immediate way by querying the dbo.v_license_info view. The view will directly tell how many Standard- and Enterprise Edition licenses that are needed.
License information is also available on the Licensing dashboard:
For more information, see the Licensing dashboard.
Performance Store will ensure, that license costs are optimized for the lowest cost possible, and at the same time ensure that everything is compliant.