May 18, 2017 at 8:17 am
All, I have a question regarding the enterprise edition of SQL Server. Right now, our prod server is running on 2008, 2012 and 2014 and they are standard edition. We are just thinking about upgrading to 2016 Enterprise version but running into budget issues. I have some info but I am not sure how accurate my information is. How many enterprise licenses do we need if we have 4 VM running on a physical server? 1 license, or 4 license? How many licenses do we need if we need to have 2 more servers because we are thinking about going with Always ON availability group solution for our mission critical systems. Also, if we upgrade our servers to 2016 from 2008, 2012 and 2014, are there any known issues, users have experienced?
May 18, 2017 at 8:29 am
AlwaysOn FCI or AG introdcues Windows Server Failover Clustering and that affects licensing too.
Give more detail on your intended design and also consult your Microsoft licensing agent for accurate information
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"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉
May 18, 2017 at 8:31 am
From your post I assume you have some layer of virtualization, and all VMs running on this one host.
If you have an EA, you should fully license all the HOST cores and each VM will be covered.
Best to speak to you MS License Partner.
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This thing is addressing problems that dont exist. Its solution-ism at its worst. We are dumbing down machines that are inherently superior. - Gilfoyle
May 18, 2017 at 8:45 am
newdba2017 - Thursday, May 18, 2017 8:17 AMAlso, if we upgrade our servers to 2016 from 2008, 2012 and 2014, are there any known issues, users have experienced?
2014 brought in a new cardinality estimator, which could significantly effect the performance of your queries on your 2008 & 2012 instances. The best way to check is to test vigorously and performance tweak any queries that perform slowly.
Microsoft does provide a list of breaking changes and a Data Migration Assistant, which can be found here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/breaking-changes-to-database-engine-features-in-sql-server-2016 (you'll need to check the pages for 2008 and 2012 separately; going from 2008 to 2016 will include all breaking changes from 2012 - 2016 for example) and here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53595
Thom~
Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
Larnu.uk
May 18, 2017 at 12:04 pm
Do read the following paper https://download.microsoft.com/download/9/C/6/9C6EB70A-8D52-48F4-9F04-08970411B7A3/SQL_Server_2016_Licensing_Guide_EN_US.pdf.
It does go into detail on how the whole licensing works. And even after reading it you should confirm with Microsoft so ensure that your understanding of the rules is correct.
And I would check if you really need AlwaysOn AG or just fail over cluster - one requires Enterprise, the other is available also on Standard - SA is required on both to allow for true fail over - otherwise its only once per 90 days.
As you have been using VM's do take special consideration of the virtualization licensing aspects of that document if you are still going to use VM's.
May 23, 2017 at 1:51 am
newdba2017 - Thursday, May 18, 2017 8:17 AMAll, I have a question regarding the enterprise edition of SQL Server. Right now, our prod server is running on 2008, 2012 and 2014 and they are standard edition. We are just thinking about upgrading to 2016 Enterprise version but running into budget issues. I have some info but I am not sure how accurate my information is. How many enterprise licenses do we need if we have 4 VM running on a physical server? 1 license, or 4 license? How many licenses do we need if we need to have 2 more servers because we are thinking about going with Always ON availability group solution for our mission critical systems. Also, if we upgrade our servers to 2016 from 2008, 2012 and 2014, are there any known issues, users have experienced?
There are different licensing policy and its best to talk to a MS licensing expert and with my limited knowledge ,
Licensing is based on Core . For ex: if one of the VM have 4 core then you need 2 license there (minimum license is for 2 core) and so on.
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