Standard Edition on VM - 4 CPU limit

  • Hi All,

    I've been having a bit of an argument with a project manager this afternoon.

    He wants to put SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition onto a (VMWare) Virtual Server with 8 virtual CPUs.

    I think he's getting confused between the licensing arrangements and product edition features.

    He's convinced that we can use Standard Edition and use the 8 virtual CPUs because the underlying hardware is a 4 x Quad core CPU server so it's actually only using 2 real CPUs (2 x 4 cores).

    I'm arguing that SQL doesn't give a monkeys whether the CPUs are real or virtual, the way the virtual CPUs are presented to SQL makes them look like 8 real CPUs and therefore Enterprise Edition will be required otherwise it will only use 4 of the 8 CPUs.

    Who's right?

  • He is almost right, but wrong because of VM.

    Non-VM, it is licensed by physical CPU socket and can use all logical CPUs which are utilizing no more than 4 physical processor sockets.

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/pearlknows/archive/2011/01/24/microsoft-sql-server-licensing-for-dummies.aspx

    However, in a virtual environment, the licensing doesn't care if the CPU is physical or logical - so 4 is the max for standard edition. R2 has some enterprise changes, but not for standard that I saw. http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/licensing-faq.aspx

    Jim

    Jim Murphy
    http://www.sqlwatchmen.com
    @SQLMurph

  • On vmware vsphere v5 i've set virtual socket =1 and virtual cores per socket=8. In this way sql2008 std ed. use all of 8 cores available.

    The OS is a win 2008 R2 enterprise edition

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