SQL Server 2012 Licensing

The bull is out now.

If you arent yet aware, read the Official Declaration is here. A lot has already been written and speculated so far. I wouldn’t add to it any further.

Key points (read, my interpretations) from Licensing Guide are below.

a. Computing power based licensing now costed on basis of cores, instead of processors. Its to make costing simplified for phyiscal and cloud based setups. (earlier it literally were like two seperate lines, one for physical setup, and other for virtualized setups). And the bummer now. You will have to buy 4-core license, at the least! It only means that you will continue to cost almost same as if using SQLServer2008 when you are using quad-core processors. If you are using more cores, then you will have to pay more.
b. Workgroup, Small Business, Datacenter editions retired. Glad to hear that to be honest, the edition listing was literally too long earlier. You now have Enterprise (all inclusive), Business Intellignce (Std + Corporate BI features), Standard (basic Database Engine + Standard BI), Developer, Express, Compact, and Web. I personally still feel that Express/Compact could have been merged into one, but still, at least some clarity has been looped in. Yet though, key point am not able to get my around is that why BI edition is available in Server+CAL licensing only. If you want to go for Core licensing for BI (for cost benefits), go for EE.
c. Virtualized environments can be licensed in two modes: Individual VMs, or maximum virtualization (in case of highly virtualized platforms).
d. VM based licensing follows standard stand-alone server licensing as in point#b. For intra-serverfarm/host provider/cloud movement for a VM, you will have to procure "Software Assurance" along with core licenses.
e. For Maximum virtualization, one shall procure SQL Server Core licenses + Software Assurance for whole server farm.
f. Current clients for EE can upgrade to SQL2012 at no additional cost, with following caveat:
    – it shall be done by 30/06/2012
    – if you are running SQL2008R2 with >20 cores, contact your MS representative for transitioning licensing mode
g. For moving current processor license to core licensing
    – SE/EE per processor under Software Assurance (SA) will be exchanged with 4core licenses per processor, and
    – DataCenter Edition per processor under SA will be exchanged with 8core EE licenses per processor.

An interesting perspective on Recent Apple “Tax”

Recently there was a news for an unprecedented charge back by Apple Inc. for content sold through its App Service’s subscription service. Aint a good news for current players. And, Seth, has a good point on how he see it. I wonder if it will inspire the OSS yet again, in a rather different “free” world fashion.

SQL Server 2008 Licensing

A bit recently I ran into a requirement to evaluated if our client project team shall be using SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition or if they can go with Standard Edition. Reason is quite obvious – Moolah! (there is a price difference of appx $20,000 amongst the two of them)

We discussed for project requirements, future heuristics for the client business (aka load on the server), and concluded to go with Standard Edition of SQL Server 2008.
Advantage of the solution: upfront money savings.
Disadvantage of the solution: we had to go over to discuss infrastructure scale out & migration opportunities in advance (before even starting the project) to ensure we know what will be done later if we need to beef up the capacity.

The stated discussion made me to do some upfront preparation, which I think are worth collating here.
Here’s the FAQ section, where MS have attempted to address your initial queries – obviously with space left with you asking for more! And, here’s the actual tabular content with Pricing details for specific SQL Server 2008 versions.
And, if you are interested in nth level of detail to compare features of each edition, this page might be a good start point.

For more SQL Server pricing basics craving, you can refer this document, again from Microsoft itself. Its a good read with details and examples, I would recommend reading it for sure. A SQL Server 2008 licensing overview document is available too, though it doesnt mention anything around actual costs.

If you happen to be considering to buy more than 5 licenses, then you shall be using Volume Licensing, and you can learn more about it here. And if you want to peek in to greater depth on terms (standard & exceptional) of SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, then you can reference this page.

Couple of additional key info bytes:
- You have to buy CAL separately (user / device client access licenses are separate from server license),
- Server licenses are based on Physical CPUs (not cores),
- In most of the cases, you can get away with buying just one server license in case of mirrored databases (for failover), and
- Server / CAL licenses as mentioned above doesnt cover support costs (just like any other popular DB vendor). You have to buy it separately, which generally is 20-25% of total license fees (as quoted by MS license overview document).