February 4, 2013 at 7:20 am
Hi All,
We want to upgrade to SOL Server 2012 from SQL Server 2008, mainly for the High Availability Groups features.
However, i'm really struggling to calculate the licensing costs, we are based in the UK and I cant find much info on the costs here.
We are a eCommerce Company so our user base is undetermined however the database is only accessed by a few SQL user accounts that the web front end use.
I'm trying to work out the costs for the 3 servers setup in HA group below:
Primary server 2 x 6 core processors,
HA mirror (no read access) 2 x 6 core processors, -- Do I need a license for this server?
HA mirror (with read access for reporting) 2 x 4 core processors. Can I get a cal license for this?
What are the costs per core license in the UK?? I can only find US license costs!?!
Thanks
February 4, 2013 at 7:33 am
As with any thing licensing, speak to MS or your MS reseller directly, dont take a public forum as the truth on something as important as licensing as MS may change the rules and not let the community know.
But...........
Do you have valid software assurance on your existing licenses for the servers?
How many users do you have who can access the reporting server?
The main prod box will need 12 core licenses
Mirror read only will be ok without licenses as its got no user base
Reporting box, depends on the number of users
February 4, 2013 at 7:46 am
anthony.green (2/4/2013)
As with any thing licensing, speak to MS or your MS reseller directly, dont take a public forum as the truth on something as important as licensing as MS may change the rules and not let the community know.But...........
Do you have valid software assurance on your existing licenses for the servers?
How many users do you have who can access the reporting server?
The main prod box will need 12 core licenses
Mirror read only will be ok without licenses as its got no user base
Reporting box, depends on the number of users
Thanks Anthony, your advice is what you have posted in other similar threads to mine. 🙂
Trouble is I cant find a Microsoft email address to contact their UK sales :crying:
I have had some quotes from 3rd party vendors but they are all different :unsure:
To answer a couple of your questions:
Do you have valid software assurance on your existing licenses for the servers? No software assurance .
How many users do you have who can access the reporting server - max 30
I will continue to try contact MS
Many Thanks
February 4, 2013 at 7:52 am
bugg (2/4/2013)
How many users do you have who can access the reporting server - max 30
30 individual users or 30 max concurrent users?
February 4, 2013 at 7:54 am
up to 30 individual users
February 4, 2013 at 8:00 am
You could go server cal on that one then.
Last time I checked the OpenNL pricing is
$6874 - Enterprise Core - 20 cores (2x6)+(2x4) = $137480
Enterprise doesnt come server & CAL so would be the only option of the above
$1793 - Standard Core - 20 cores (2x6)+(2x4) = $35860
$1793 Core, $898 server, $209 Cal - Standard Core & ServerCal - 12 cores + 1 server + 30 Cals = $28684
Each reseller will be different as it would depend on their agreements with MS as well as their markup so expect a lot of flux when dealing with resellers.
But my first point still stands, get it from the horses mouth.
February 4, 2013 at 8:31 am
Out of interest what have the resellers quoted you for and how much roughly?
February 4, 2013 at 9:10 am
anthony.green (2/4/2013)
Out of interest what have the re-sellers quoted you for and how much roughly?
Okay I've just spoken with Microsoft directly in the UK and they don't give any license costs, one has to go through re-sellers. Also when I asked about licensing on a read only mirror with HA customer services didn't really know but were leaning towards you need to pay licensing on it.
2 Quotes:
Company A
•SQLSvrEntCore 2012 SNGL OLP 2Lic NL CoreLic Qlfd comes at a cost of around £11,130.14 ( for 2 cores?)
•Microsoft SQL Server Standard Core 2012 SNGL OLP 2Lic NL CoreLic Qlfd - Qty 1 @ £3153.00 ( for 2 cores?)
Company B
•SQLSvrEntCore 2012 SNGL OLP 2Lic NL CoreLic Qlfd comes at a cost £10,996.34
•Microsoft SQL Server Standard Core 2012 SNGL OLP 2Lic NL CoreLic Qlfd - Qty 1 @ £2867.74
So if i went Enterprise with company A with those prices I would be paying:
Primary 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2640 2.5GHz (6 Cores) : 6 x £11,130.14 (2 Cores) = £66780.84
Readable mirror 2x intel (4 core ) : 4 x £11,130.14 = £44520.00
Total £111,300.84 !!!
Which is more then the US..
February 4, 2013 at 10:04 am
Licensing is bad with MS. They don't have the scenarios well defined, and lots of licensing people aren't up to speed. If you call back, you might get different advice.
I suspect that if you allow failover to your read-only server, and I'm not sure if you can avoid this with AlwaysOn, you'll have to license this the same as the prod server. I suspect you need 24 core licenses for your 3 servers. That's my gut feel, based on what I've experienced with licensing in the past.
February 4, 2013 at 8:01 pm
This PDF from Microsoft is quie easy to understand "SQL 2012 Licensing Datasheet" and can be found with a search on Google, but try get the latest version.
The 2 x 6 core servers will require 12 per-core licences, and the non-readable "DR" server won't need to be licensed as long as it has the same or fewer cores. The failover conditions have also been relaxed and there is more freedom around swapping from primary to secondary and back.
The 2 x 4 core server will need 8 per-core licences.
So 20 per-core licences in total
Enterprise is only available on a per-core basis with a minimum of 4 cores, and then in 2 core lots after that. Sorry, no option here for Per-server and CALs. I'd use the $6874 per core cost as a base level (convert to £) then negotiate with the reseller. The more you buy the less you pay per core.
For AO you will have to buy Enterprise.
If the readable replica is 100% only reporting I'd consider using Standard and per-server/CAL licenses with custom built Replication rather than AO. Benifits are: You only replicate the data you need to report on, except for required primary keys you can customise the keys on the subscriber to improve reporting performance, it's a lot cheaper:
20 per core Enterprise licences @ $6874 = $137480
vs
12 per core Enterprise licences @ $6874 = $82488 (required for the AO portion) +
1 Per Server Standard license @ $898 + 30 CALs @ $209 = $7168 (less if not all users are connecting at the same time) for the reporting server.
Total cost $89656 ( Save $47820)
Take these licensing requirements to a few vendors and ask them for their best price, don't show them your costings. If they aren't covering you correctly MS will "take it out" on you, not the vendor unfortunately, so you do need to know what your requirements are.
Hope this helps
Leo
Leo
Nothing in life is ever so complicated that with a little work it can't be made more complicated.
February 5, 2013 at 2:34 am
Leo.Miller (2/4/2013)
If the readable replica is 100% only reporting I'd consider using Standard and per-server/CAL licenses with custom built Replication rather than AO. Benifits are: You only replicate the data you need to report on, except for required primary keys you can customise the keys on the subscriber to improve reporting performance, it's a lot cheaper:
20 per core Enterprise licences @ $6874 = $137480
vs
12 per core Enterprise licences @ $6874 = $82488 (required for the AO portion) +
1 Per Server Standard license @ $898 + 30 CALs @ $209 = $7168 (less if not all users are connecting at the same time) for the reporting server.
Total cost $89656 ( Save $47820)
Leo
Thanks for all the input guys very much appreciated.
Leo if i'm going to use replication then i might as well go standard all the way.
I can mirror between Principal and Secondary and then use replication to do reporting and drop High Availability groups all together.
However, I have looked into using replication but the issue is when replication happens the tables are not accessible.
So if someone is running a chunky report replication may kill it. Where as with a readable mirror it is fully up to date and reports wont be blocked. Currently I restore a backup of the production DB to my report server (use this to run for DBCC checkDB) so I get to test the backup restore works and the integrity is intact plus it becomes my reporting DB but the data is a day old.
My only concern with mirroring is that it is marked deprecated in SQL 2012, that is why I wanted to get accustomed to High Availability Groups. Is there a way to do transcriptional replication with out it locking tables?
Cheers
February 5, 2013 at 10:43 am
A couple things: AlwaysOn is Enterprise only. I forgot about that, so your read only replica is going to be core licensed if you go that route.
For replication, it doesn't necessarily lock tables in one swoop. Transactions are applied to the subscriber, just as they would be on a publisher. This means the changes will lock as if another client were running them. Reports running would likely block replication changes until the report finished. If a change is in flight, it will block a report running, unless you were to use nolock and not respect changes. Depending on your reporting requirements, this may or may not be an issue.
February 6, 2013 at 8:05 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (2/5/2013)
A couple things: AlwaysOn is Enterprise only. I forgot about that, so your read only replica is going to be core licensed if you go that route.For replication, it doesn't necessarily lock tables in one swoop. Transactions are applied to the subscriber, just as they would be on a publisher. This means the changes will lock as if another client were running them. Reports running would likely block replication changes until the report finished. If a change is in flight, it will block a report running, unless you were to use nolock and not respect changes. Depending on your reporting requirements, this may or may not be an issue.
Thanks Steve, I'm curious can you setup SOL server so it only uses 4 cores out of a 6 core processor and therefore you only have to pay for 4 core licenses? 😎
February 6, 2013 at 8:08 am
bugg (2/6/2013)
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (2/5/2013)
A couple things: AlwaysOn is Enterprise only. I forgot about that, so your read only replica is going to be core licensed if you go that route.For replication, it doesn't necessarily lock tables in one swoop. Transactions are applied to the subscriber, just as they would be on a publisher. This means the changes will lock as if another client were running them. Reports running would likely block replication changes until the report finished. If a change is in flight, it will block a report running, unless you were to use nolock and not respect changes. Depending on your reporting requirements, this may or may not be an issue.
Thanks Steve, I'm curious can you setup SOL server so it only uses 4 cores out of a 6 core processor and therefore you only have to pay for 4 core licenses? 😎
No if SQL can see if you have to license if, even though you can set the CPU affinity to ignore the cores, it still needs to be licensed as whats to stop someone coming in and changing the affinity to see all cores.
The only thing would be to disable a CPU in the bios or remove it from the server, that way you only run on one CPU and need 6 core licenses not 12.
February 6, 2013 at 9:11 am
AFAIK, every physical core/CPU in a server has to be licensed if SQL Server can use it, even potentially. The affinity mask doesn't count here. I assume that for VMs, you have to license every CPU you've assigned to the VM.
This has been pretty standard in SQL Server for a long time. You can't have 6 cores and license 4, even if SQL is setup to use 4. The best thing I'd recommend is to use a VM and assign only 4 cores to it.
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