October 12, 2010 at 5:59 am
Hi Gang,
There's a lot of confusion where I work about the licencing model of SQL Server 2008 in a virtual environment.
This isn't helped by assorted documentation i've downloaded from Microsofts website which appears to give conflicting information.
Normally we would buy CPU licences for each SQL Server for ease of administration.
Could someone suggest what we would require for the following scenario....
Underlying hardware = 4 physical servers with 4 x quad core cpus.
This underlying hardware is carved up into many virtual environments using VMWare.
One of these virtual environments has SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition running and has 4 virtual CPUs assigned to it.
Because of load balancing, failover, etc the VM instance is not tied to any one physical server. It could at anytime reside on any one of the 4 underlying physical servers.
Now because this VM farm consisting of 4 servers is not purely for SQL it would not be worth buying a 16 cpu Enterprise Edition licence allowing unlimited VM instances of SQL, so....
The various docs i've seen suggest the following scenarios for CPU licencing....
1. One licence for each virtual CPU, eg: 4
2. The number of physical CPUs divided by the number of virtual CPUs assigned to the VM instance, eg: 4/4 = 1
The docs seem to indicate that because SQL could at anytime be on any one of the 4 underlying physical servers we would need licences for each server.
So for point 1 above we'd need 16 Standard Edition CPU licences and for point 2 we'd need 4.
Can someone confirm which is correct or is it something completely different? 🙂
October 12, 2010 at 8:57 am
OK, reading through the latest SQL 2008 Licensing pdf I reckon in the example I gave it would be scenario 2 and i'd just need 1 CPU licence. http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/e/6/1e68f92c-f334-4517-b610-e4dee946ef91/2008%20SQL%20Licensing%20Overview%20final.docx
However, if you look at page 31 it seems to indicate to me that a licence is also required for each physical server that VMWare could possibly dynamically assign it to. So actually 4 licences would be required.
Any thoughts?
October 12, 2010 at 9:19 am
This has all changed between versions SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2
which edition are you using?
Licensing all physical CPU's in the Host machine at Enterprise level in 2008 or Datacentre level in 2008 R2 allows unlimited vCPU SQL Server licences (on that host only). If you're on VMWare and using VMotion capability then watch out for licensing issues here in case the VM's move to an unlicensed host.
Check the link here for 2008
Check the link here for 2008 R2
Note: Enterprise Edition for R2 only supports up to four operating system instances (although you may have multiple instances of sql server in each OS environment)
Basically, MS spotted the gap in the market and is now exploiting it!!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉
October 12, 2010 at 9:33 am
We're using 2008 "Original" 🙂
This is why I love Microsoft...
The link you provided (which I also found earlier when searching through the MS website) seems to contradict the information in their latest licence info pdf. AAAARRRGGGHH!
Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply