SQL Server 2019 is in development, and likely getting close to being released. I mean, it is named 2019, so I assume we're down less than 6 months of time before we start deploying it. One of the decisions that Microsoft will need to make before release is what the costs for each edition will be, as well as the hardware limits involved. I assume other items like OS support and feature mix will also be decided, but those are less important to me after SQL Server 2016 SP1. Most features just work on all editions.

Recently Glenn Berry proposed some new limits. He requests that 2019 Standard edition raise it's core limit to 64 and the RAM limit to 256GB. These would be raises from 2016, where we were limited to the lessor of 24 cores or 4 sockets and 128GB of RAM. We do get 32GB of RAM for In-Memory objects and 32GB for columnstore as well. There were no changes for SQL Server 2017.

What do you think? Are these limits that make sense in a world where hardware advances and a "small" system is much larger than anything we used at the turn of the millennium? Since data sizes continue to grow and most of us want (and need) more hardware, is 128GB of RAM crippling to a small database server? Do you think that more cores are needed to run a Standard Edition server?

I might also point out that raising limits might keep some people on Standard Edition, but it might also get more people to move from SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2019, Standard to Standard. At lower limits, when you might be limited to processor and not core licensing, why not stay on 2008 if you can't get a much faster system?

Personally, I think that Microsoft ought to raise limits somewhat. I do think 256GB of RAM makes sense, even if that includes the In-Memory and Columnstore usage. For cores, 24 to 64 seems like a lot, but what about 40 cores? Who cares on sockets, let's make this simple. Cores. These days, no one is going to get 8 sockets at 4 cores each, but if they do, what does it matter? Let them use all of them on Standard Edition.