January 27, 2016 at 7:48 am
Hi,
I was wondering if someone could help me understand the licensing correctly. We have an active/active Windows cluster with two instances of SQL Server using database mirroring to another location. If we changed it to an active/passive Windows cluster with database mirroring (well, it would be upgraded to Availability Groups):
1) Would the cost of the licensing be less since we're querying only one instance of SQL Server?
2) Can I run DBCC CHECKDB on the read-only Availability Group?
3) Each server has 2 processor and 12 cores each (24 total cores) with hyperthreading on. The licensing only pertains to actual cores, right?
4) That would be 24 * $7k = $168k? That is, if I only need one license for the active production SQL Server instance (if it's active/passive)...
5) Around how much more is Software Assurance? Is that necessary?
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this!
January 27, 2016 at 8:04 am
dajonx (1/27/2016)
Hi,I was wondering if someone could help me understand the licensing correctly. We have an active/active Windows cluster with two instances of SQL Server using database mirroring to another location. If we changed it to an active/passive Windows cluster with database mirroring (well, it would be upgraded to Availability Groups):
1) Would the cost of the licensing be less since we're querying only one instance of SQL Server?
2) Can I run DBCC CHECKDB on the read-only Availability Group?
3) Each server has 2 processor and 12 cores each (24 total cores) with hyperthreading on. The licensing only pertains to actual cores, right?
4) That would be 24 * $7k = $168k? That is, if I only need one license for the active production SQL Server instance (if it's active/passive)...
5) Around how much more is Software Assurance? Is that necessary?
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this!
I went through similar exercise, licensing is always confusing but really at the end of day MSFT can make "adjustments" depending how many licenses you need. I will try to answer what i have read so far:
i) If you have AAG with FCI, you don't have to pay for the first replica, like if you have 1 primary and 3 replica's, you would basically need 3 licenses.
2) No you can't, also doesn't help much if you execute on secondary because you also want to check if the pages are corrupt at the disk level.
3) Yes the licensing pertains to actual cores on a physical, might be different on VM.
4) Would 12 * 7 K since you only pay for physical cores.
5) Absolutely necessary because if you run into any issues Microsoft will charge you approximately $250 per hour with SA, that being said working with MSFT is not always fun ,i have opened probably 10 - 15 support calls to MSFT so far , by the time they got back to me with there testing and results i figured out solution myself for about 10 support calls.
January 27, 2016 at 10:28 am
Thank you!
1 )So since FCI doesn't use a replica, there's no cost pertaining to the passive server... But since we use database mirroring, a replica will take its place. So that means that I would need one license. Is that accurate?
2) Ahh, yes you're right. I do take the full backup of the database and restore on another server to run DBCC CHECKDB. And I will need a license for that server... Will SQL Server Standard version be sufficient?
3) No SQL VMs here.
4) Thank you!
5) Do you happen to know about how much more Software Assurance is? Like double the license cost?
6) So that would mean that I might be able to purchase one SQL Server Enterprise for production (with the "free" replica) and possibly SQL Server Standard for development/DBCC... Does that sound about right?
Edit: We're now thinking of purchasing 16 core servers with high clock speeds to save on the SQL licensing... Do you think 16 cores with high clock speeds would work well?
Edit2: I forgot to mention that on the database mirrored side, is a two server cluster... I'm guessing we'd need at least two licenses then?
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