Licensing

I usually can count on Google to figure out what I want to search for, even if there’s typos in my search. But sometimes Google just doesn’t get it right. I’m not Brent Ozar. I can’t afford a Rolex! Do you have any searches that Google or Bing didn’t get right and made you laugh? Drop…

Should I Install Multiple Instances of SQL Server?

December 8, 2016

Marina Towers in Chicago Instance stacking is the technique of installing multiple instances of SQL Server on the same Windows instance. For example, you might have a VM or server named SQLPROD1, and have: SQLPROD1 – default instance of SQL Server, say SQL 2016 SQLPROD1\SQL2014 – for our older apps SQLPROD1\SharePoint – because it’s supposed…

The Cost of Adding a Reporting Server

December 5, 2016

Architecture, Licensing, Log Shipping, SQL Server

“We’d like to offload our reporting queries to a separate SQL Server.” The first costs are fairly obvious. Hardware and storage – even if you’re running it in a virtual machine, you need to account for the costs of say, 4 cores and 32GB RAM. Not only will you need storage for the databases, but…

Initial Thoughts on 2016 SP1

November 21, 2016

Erik Darling

In-Memory OLTP (Hekaton), Licensing, Partitioning, SQL Server

A really odd choice I’ve talked a bit about my annoyance with hardware limits for Standard Edition here and here. If you’re a bunch of SQL-savvy developers who understand the Enterprise Edition features that are now available in 2016 SP1, great. You’re a very small minority of shops. I’m talking about places like StackOverflow and…

SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition Now Has Many Enterprise Edition Features.

November 16, 2016

In-Memory OLTP (Hekaton), Licensing, SQL Server

Starting with today’s release of SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 1, Standard Edition now has a lot more of the features of Enterprise Edition. Here’s the list from Microsoft’s announcement post: Performance features – in-memory OLTP (Hekaton), in-memory columnstore, operational analytics Data warehousing features – partitioning, compression, CDC, database snapshots Some security features – Always Encrypted,…

Searching Strings in SQL Server is Expensive

October 18, 2016

Execution Plans, Licensing, SQL Server

In the classic spirit of my How to Think Like the Engine class, let’s go take a look at the StackOverflow.Users table and find all the users named Brent. There’s a DisplayName field, and I’m going to be querying that a lot in this blog post, so I’ll go ahead and create an index on…

The Problem with Windows Server 2016 Licensing

October 12, 2016

Windows Server 2016 Licensing Guide (PDF) Windows Server 2016 is now licensed by the core, but that’s not really the big problem. The bigger problem is buried in the licensing guide (PDF): “A minimum of 16 core licenses is required for each server.” “A minimum of 8 core licenses is required for each physical processor.” When…

What kind of hardware can you buy for one core’s worth of Enterprise Edition?

August 12, 2016

Dell R730 Microsoft charges $14,256 for a 2-core pack of SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition. So how much hardware can we get for $7,128? I started with one of the more common 2-socket server models, a Dell PowerEdge R730, and then optioned it with: Chassis – up to 8 2.5″ drives (because 2.5″ drives aren’t…

RAM and Sympathy

May 5, 2016

Erik Darling

In-Memory OLTP (Hekaton), Licensing, SQL Server

With the release date for 2016 finally announced Everyone can start gearing up to gaze upon its far shores from the 2008R2 instance they can’t or won’t upgrade for various reasons. I’m excited for a lot of the improvements and enhancements coming along, and generally hope I’m wrong about customer adoption. One annoyance with the…

Microsoft SQL Server is Coming to Linux.

March 8, 2016

Two things: SQL Server is coming to Linux, and no, this isn’t April 1st, although the meeting minutes kinda read that way. Let’s zoom back for a second: if you want to expand an existing business, you have two good options: Sell a new product to your existing customers Sell your existing product to new customers For years,…

Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts: Much Cheaper SQL Server Licensing

October 6, 2015

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Licensing, SQL Server

When you build SQL Servers in your data center, and you license the host with Enterprise Edition, you get the ability to run as many virtual SQL Servers as you want on that hardware. In the cloud, though, you haven’t had that luxury. In the past, with Azure VMs and Amazon Web Services’ EC2 VMs,…

Microsoft SQL Server Licensing Simplified into 7 Rules

April 28, 2015

licensing

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Licensing is really complex, but as long as you know these seven rules, you can go a long way: If you query it, you have to license it. “It” means the Windows environment – all of the processor cores that Windows sees. (Things get a little weirder under virtualization.) Offloading a backup or a DBCC is…

Are You Getting the Benefits of Virtualization?

January 27, 2015

Licensing, SQL Server, Virtualization

Here’s some of the reasons companies usually virtualize their SQL Servers: Cost savings on hardware Cost savings on Windows OS licensing Cost savings on SQL Server licensing Protect against the failure of a single hardware element Leverage extended features for Disaster Recovery Automatic load balancing across multiple hosts Easier hardware replacement/migration When we perform a SQL Critical…

How to Ask Microsoft a SQL Server Licensing Question

December 31, 2014

Kendra Little

I’ve never been so excited to write about licensing. Licensing is hard, y’all. It changes often and it’s full of lots of little details. Microsoft puts out licensing datasheets, but they’re in a difficult spot — if they explain absolutely everything, the documents get longer and harder to understand. So they have to balance between brevity…

Did You Give SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition Enough Memory?

December 10, 2014

Kendra Little

Who needs disk when you have memory? It’s a bummer that SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition only allows you 64GB of memory. And it’s good news that the limit goes up to 128GB of memory in SQL Server 2014. But are you getting as much memory as you can out of Standard Edition? Check out…

Why Core-Based Licensing Matters for Performance Tuning

November 13, 2014

If you don’t license all of your SQL Server’s CPU cores, you need to pay particular attention to your server hardware. Say you’re using an HP DL580 with four CPU sockets, each of which has a Xeon processor plugged in with 10 cores. That’s a total of 40 real cores, or 80 logical processors if you’ve enabled…

How SQL Server Licensing Works [Video]

September 29, 2014

Licensing, SQL Server, Videos

You have a sneaking suspicion that your servers aren’t all paid for, and you need to get a rough idea of how SQL Server licensing works. You’ve never bought a box of SQL Server before, and you have no idea where to get started. Microsoft Certified Master Brent Ozar will break it down into a…

The Very First Concern with SQL Virtualization: Licensing

September 16, 2014

Licensing, SQL Server, Virtualization

licensing, virtualization

Every single thing you do with a virtual SQL Server starts with one very important concern: how are you going to license it? The 3 Common Ways to License Virtual SQL Servers The software licensing section of my local library Developer Edition, by the guest – Developer Edition has all the power of Enterprise Edition,…

SQL Server 2014 Licensing Changes

April 3, 2014

Jeremiah Peschka