Licensing Question (2 processors shown as 4)

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Licensing Question (2 processors shown as 4)

RSingh-135921

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Points: 1438
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July 17, 2007 at 3:27 pm

#173843

Hi,
We have a server having 2 Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) processors. But it shows as 4 processors in Task Manager and System Information also shows that it has 4 processors.
Questions bothering me:
1. Why does it show 4 processors when there are only 2 of them installed on server? Is it because of the dual core nature of the processors?
2. What should be licensing used here? Should i use licensing for 4 processors or 2 processors if I am going for per-processor licensing.
Regards,
RSingh

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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Aaron Ingold SSCrazy Eights Points: 9070 More actions · Answer 1

Per-processor licensing would be the number of physical processors. So a dual-core processor would only count as 1 processor even though two logical processors show up in the system.

You only need to pay for two licenses:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/c/a/ecafe5d1-b514-48ab-93eb-61377df9c5c2/SQLServer2005Licensingv1.1.doc

Sugesh Kumar One Orange Chip Points: 27311 More actions · Answer 2

Dual Duo core processors should virtually show as 4 processors which is right. But licensing as mentioned can be done for 2.

Cheers,
Sugeshkumar Rajendran
SQL Server MVP
http://sugeshkr.blogspot.com

CGSJohnson SSCertifiable Points: 7208 More actions · Answer 3

The same is true for hyperthreaded processors. I guess the same also holds true if the processors are dual-cored and hyperthreaded processors, huh? Am I right? Thanks.

Chris

RSingh-135921 Default port Points: 1438 More actions · Answer 4

Thanks Aaron and Sugesh.

This was really helpful.

Regards

RSingh

RSingh-135921 Default port Points: 1438 More actions · Answer 5

I have another question now:

How to reduce the number of processors licensed without re-installing SQL Server.

I was able to do this on SQL Server 2000 servers by going to Control Panel -> SQL Server 2000 licensing setup but couldn't find anything similar for SQL Server 2005.

Pls advise how can I reduce number of processors licensed on SQL Server 2005.

Regards,

RSingh

Antares686 SSC Guru Points: 125444 More actions · Answer 6

Yes MS lincenses based on physical processor and not logical so you count the number of processors you installed and not the count the OS reports. Even if you had 2 quad cores with hyper threading (when they come out) your license would only require 2 even thou the OS will report the logical count of 16.

And as I recall MS was the first to jump on this while Oracle choose to license per logical instead.