May 14, 2009 at 9:28 am
Hi,
My company are about to upgrade some of our servers to SQL2005 on a Processor License scheme. We intend to use Standard Edition.
My Question is, can we legally instance SQL Server 2005/8 more than once on a physical server with a processor license?
I found the Special Licensing Considerations as shown below, but it's not very clear to me.
(http://www.microsoft.com/Sqlserver/2005/en/us/special-considerations.aspx#Virtualization)
When Licensed per Processor.
Workgroup, Standard, and Enterprise editions of SQL Server 2005 allow for unlimited instances in each virtual or physical operating environment. For Workgroup, Standard and Enterprise Edition, each virtual operating environment running SQL Server 2005 must have a processor license for each processor that the virtual machine accesses. If a copy of SQL Server is running on a physical operating environment, processor licenses are required for all of the processors on that physical server. For Enterprise Edition there is an added option: if all processors in a machine have been licensed, then the customer may run unlimited instances of SQL server 2005 on an unlimited number of virtual operating environments on that same machine.
_____________________________________________________________________________MCITP: Business Intelligence Developer (2005)
May 14, 2009 at 9:37 am
Mark,
You need to call MS for your specific instance. They won't clarify in a general sense.
My understanding is if you license the physical procs (sockets, not cores) on the machine with Enterprise, you can have as many VMs as you want, not more licensing. With standard, if you have 2 physical processors, and you have 3 instances, each with 1 logical CPU, you need 3 proc licenses.
I might be wrong, but that's how I read it.
May 14, 2009 at 9:41 am
I do agree, contact Microsoft to be sure. I, howver, read it differently. If you have dual processor system, and purchase 2 processor licenses for the server, you can install multiple instances on that server.
May 14, 2009 at 10:06 am
Thats the way I'm reading it. by just not 100% .
Thanks for your input.
_____________________________________________________________________________MCITP: Business Intelligence Developer (2005)
May 14, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Which way? As I see it or Lynn?
I thought this came up in an MVP forum or call, that you have to license each logical proc that a VM accesses with Standard.
May 14, 2009 at 1:12 pm
The VM environment makes it a bit more difficult. I'm looking at it at the physical server level at the moment. I am not looking at virtualizing any SQL Server database servers at this time. Maybe if we go to SQL Server 2008, but not with SQL Server 2005.
May 15, 2009 at 2:35 am
I see it the same a Lynn. (we are also only looking at the physical server)
_____________________________________________________________________________MCITP: Business Intelligence Developer (2005)
May 15, 2009 at 8:29 am
If any of you talk to MS, I would like to know what they say to you about the licensing.
It makes sense that you would license logical procs, but only up to the number of physical procs. Anything else doesn't make sense (to me).
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