December 24, 2009 at 4:13 am
Hi,
I have a customer with SBS 2008 Premium complete with 10 SBS 2008 Premium CAL. He has two servers, one runs the SBS portion of the product with Exchange, DC and Sharepoint functionality and the second server runs 2008 Standard with SQL 2008 Standard installed as supplied in the SBS 2008 Premium product.
Currently he has 6 internal employees and two external customers (who are not employees). The two external customers access the web server installed on the second server which interfaces with the SQL 2008 standard on the second server. A third party database application is used to populate the SQL database via the web server (IIS).
He has just landed a contract which will require him to need 500 external users (not employees) and potentially more in future to use his servers in the way above. His employee count will stay the same. His external users do not need to access exchange, sharepoint or the files on the servers at all. They will only access the SQL database via IIS 7.
As I understand it he will require Server 2008 Web Edition (to allow unlimited inbound web connections by external users), a SQL 2008 Processor License (to allow unlimited connections by external users to the SQL database.) Microsoft have confirmed this is the case.
The web server uses SQL authentication to speak to the database server
My questions are:
Can I simply purchase the processor license for SQL and apply it to the current setup without reinistall ?
If not does the second server need to be removed from the domain and SQL reinstalled or is the second server (Server 2008 std as supplied with SBS) only allowed to be an SBS server and thus limited to 75 users?
Would I therefore be better to have both the web and datbase servers
Ultimately any advice on how to achieve this goal and stay licensed correctly is much appreciated as MS licensing have been unable to help other than to confirm the SQL CPU licesne and SErver 2008 Web Edition are required.
Thanks in advance
Neil
December 24, 2009 at 8:17 am
Here is the information you need but you don't have to add the 500 users to your internal users because you could install the free Express and create databases for the external application. It comes with restrictions of 1gig of ram and 4gig database size but you can change the database as needed. The reason is the Small Business SQL Server comes with a lot of restrictions.
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/small-business.aspx
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie
December 24, 2009 at 8:30 am
I believe that you are correct in that a processor license is needed for SQL. How are the users connecting to the server? Through the web?
Express could work, but it has limits that may not make it perform well. Typically not what I'd recommend, for anything other than a small application, usually a dozen or so users. However it depends on what the application does.
December 24, 2009 at 8:44 am
SQL Server Standard Edition for Small Business
This edition of SQL Server is an entry level edition that is intended for use in small single-server office environments with a small user base. SQL Server Standard for Small Business provides the capabilities of SQL Server Standard Edition, however it is limited to 75 users and has the following additional restrictions for its operating environment:
The above is from the link I posted per processor license cannot be applied to this version of SQL Server 2008 Standard.
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie
December 24, 2009 at 11:00 am
Thanks for all the replies. SQL Express is not an option as the third party application must have SQL Standard or above. I was under the impression I could simply apply a processor license to the SQL Standard for Small Business but I can see now this is not the case. The customer will be forced to go down the route of a new Server 2008 R2, SQL 2008 Standard, SQL 2008 Processor License to remain compliant.
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