MS SQL server licensing

Arietans said:
Buying MS SQL is a pain in the butt... Per core licensing with a minimum of 2 at a time now! IIRC it was around R70k for standard 2 cores the last time I priced it. Madness.
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Actually licenses are sold in 2 core SKU packs with a minimum of 4 cores per server (2 license packs) at an approximate cost of R40k per license pack (R80k for 4 cores).

With the per user licensing model, you need to purchase a server license (+-R15k) and then a CAL for each user (+-R3,500). This usually works out cheaper if you have less than 20 users.
 
Microsoft used to have Small Business Server which was a bundled license for Windows Server, SQL and Exchange for small businesses. Unfortunately it seems they have abandoned this to push their cloud offerings to small businesses.
There are still various licensing packs available to small tech companies, but unfortunately other small businesses are just expected to go cloud.
 
me_ said:
With the per user licensing model, you need to purchase a server license (+-R15k) and then a CAL for each user (+-R3,500). This usually works out cheaper if you have less than 20 users.
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...or if you can actually count your users. For a public facing website, usually you can't count them unfortunately, so only usually useful in a smaller closed / internal app.

So it starts at R80k per server then for the per core model That's ridiculous IMO. From free to R80k minimum... and then don't go and upgrade your CPU or add another on that server!
 
Arietans said:
...or if you can actually count your users. For a public facing website, usually you can't count them unfortunately, so only usually useful in a smaller closed / internal app.

So it starts at R80k per server then for the per core model That's ridiculous IMO. From free to R80k minimum... and then don't go and upgrade your CPU or add another on that server!
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For a public website, you'd probably go with a cloud option. For on-premise databases for a small company, server + cal is usually better.
Typically, you would run SQL on a VM as you are unlikely to find a physical server with only 4 cores. That way, it's irrelevant what upgrades you do to the underlying hardware as the VM will still only use 4 cores.

I really don't like Microsoft's approach of trying to force small businesses into the cloud.
 
me_ said:
Actually licenses are sold in 2 core SKU packs with a minimum of 4 cores per server (2 license packs) at an approximate cost of R40k per license pack (R80k for 4 cores).

With the per user licensing model, you need to purchase a server license (+-R15k) and then a CAL for each user (+-R3,500). This usually works out cheaper if you have less than 20 users.
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Yikes. R80k

This is an offline / site based system with perhaps one or two people at most accessing the database from our application. Are CALs transferable if people resign etc? How is this enforced? What if you just buy one CAL and people share it? (providing they are not using system simultaneously)
 
foxtrotunicorncharliekilo said:
Yikes. R80k

This is an offline / site based system with perhaps one or two people at most accessing the database from our application. Are CALs transferable if people resign etc? How is this enforced? What if you just buy one CAL and people share it? (providing they are not using system simultaneously)
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From what I can recall, CALs are transferable when someone leaves the company or when contractor leaves, etc, but are not immediately transferable (ie only active users) and so can't be shared. So even if user1 and user2 never use the system at the same time, they would still both need CALs.
The licensing isn't really enforced. Microsoft or their partner you purchase software through could come and do a site audit, but this is very rare. I have only heard of 1 company to ever get a Microsoft audit and that was a very large corporate.

Here is the complete SQL Server Licensing guide:
http://download.microsoft.com/downl...4C872E41C/SQL_Server_2014_Licensing_Guide.pdf
 
me_ said:
From what I can recall, CALs are transferable when someone leaves the company or when contractor leaves, etc, but are not immediately transferable (ie only active users) and so can't be shared. So even if user1 and user2 never use the system at the same time, they would still both need CALs.
The licensing isn't really enforced. Microsoft or their partner you purchase software through could come and do a site audit, but this is very rare. I have only heard of 1 company to ever get a Microsoft audit and that was a very large corporate.

Here is the complete SQL Server Licensing guide:
http://download.microsoft.com/downl...4C872E41C/SQL_Server_2014_Licensing_Guide.pdf
Click to expand...

The company im at now and previous company have had audits.
 
foxtrotunicorncharliekilo said:
Yikes. R80k

This is an offline / site based system with perhaps one or two people at most accessing the database from our application. Are CALs transferable if people resign etc? How is this enforced? What if you just buy one CAL and people share it? (providing they are not using system simultaneously)
Click to expand...

Cals are not tied to individuals - hence MS relies on your honesty to collect the bills. You can't have one 'user account' and have 3 people access the system using it - there are 3 users and 3 cals are required. But if a person leaves, the cal is free to go to anyone else.
Sounds to me like the per user model is suitable for you.
 
Anyone have links to websites that sell:
SQL Server Standard 2014 server license only (for use with CAL)
SQL Server Standard 2014 CAL (user)

either my google is fail or there are only dodgy looking places trying to sell.
 
Brawler said:
Anyone have links to websites that sell:
SQL Server Standard 2014 server license only (for use with CAL)
SQL Server Standard 2014 CAL (user)

either my google is fail or there are only dodgy looking places trying to sell.
Click to expand...

Why not just get in touch with MS in SA....
 
Since SQL Express database sizes are limited to 10GB, I'm not completely sold that upgrading the edition would help. 1GB RAM should be sufficient for a 10GB database without hitting any major performance bottlenecks.
Are you sure the issue is the RAM limitation? What performance counters have you run?
What kind of workload are you running across the database?
 
I'd definitely investigate how you can improve your indexing strategy and spend some time optimizing your queries before forking out extra cash at this point.
 
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