September 12, 2011

Microsoft SQL licensing in VMWare

Got a question for a couple of days ago of how many licenses they would need to install a sql server in our virtual enviroment.
I checked it up on microsoft and found a very interesting document on microsoft, SQLServer2008_LicensingGuide.pdf .

Accourding to that, you only have to buy a CPU license for each physical CPU in the Cluster, and adding as many virtual CPU:s as you have cores+hyperthreading for each processor.
In our enviroment, that would mean that we could give a SQL server 12 virtual CPU:s and still only pay for one Standard SQL server License. However, if you add another virtual server you have to buy another license.

However, if you buy a SQL server Enterprise License the difference is that you can add as many virtual servers as you want on the dedicated host.

So a dedicated cluster, not for performance but of licensing purposes, should be considered.

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