Buy sql 2012 core license

Pay by processing power for mission-critical applications as well as business intelligence. Add self-service BI on a per user basis. Take advantage of cloud-optimized licensing with the ability to license VMs, plus the flexibility to move from server to server, to hosters, or to the cloud—all on the operating system of your choice. Server [ 2 ]. Free download. Big data node cores [ 4 ]. Allows customers to install and run passive SQL Server instances in a separate OSE or server for disaster recovery in anticipation of a failover event.

Allows customers to install and run passive SQL Server instances in a separate OSE or server for disaster recovery in Azure in anticipation of a failover event.

Allows customers to install and run passive SQL Server instances in a separate OSE or server for high availability in anticipation of a failover event. Applicable under the core licensing model only. Allows license reassignment of SQL Server to third-party shared servers. In addition to the benefits noted above, Server and Cloud Enrollment SCE customers may also qualify for premium benefits, including unlimited problem resolution support.

For your specific pricing, contact your Microsoft reseller. See the product use rights for details. For sales questions, contact a Microsoft representative at in the United States or in Canada. Whether you're evaluating business needs or ready to buy, a Microsoft certified solution provider will guide you every step of the way. Try SQL Server Apply intelligence across all your data with SQL Server Whether your data is structured or unstructured, query and analyze it using the data platform with industry-leading performance and security.

Apart from limited-time exceptions for certain existing customers, the latest version of SQL Server no longer offers a per-processor licensing model for any edition. Required with Enterprise edition and one of two supported licensing models for Standard edition, the move to per-core licensing will result in higher costs for some high-end servers going forward.

Organizations that move quickly might be able to reduce some of the impact. The first, the server-Client Access License CAL model, which requires a license for each server and one for each client user or device accessing it, remains largely unchanged in SQL Server for the editions that continue to offer it.

The second, the per-processor model, licenses the product for each physical processor sometimes called a socket in the server. This model is useful in situations where client devices and users cannot be counted or the costs of doing so would be financially prohibitive, such as servers connected to the Internet. In general, the per-processor model roughly aligns SQL Server license costs with the capacity of the server being licensed, regardless of how many clients may ever connect to it.

However, hardware developments over the past several years have broken the link between a server's capacity and the number of physical processors it has. Processors are now almost all multicore: Each physical processor contains multiple processing units cores , each of which can run an independent sequence of instructions in parallel. Manufacturers now ship processors with as many as 10 cores per physical processor, giving each individual processor more parallel capacity than entire servers had when the per-processor model was introduced with SQL Server Consequently, SQL Server drops the per-processor model and replaces it with a per-core model, which requires a license for each core within each processor.

As a result, IT decision makers purchasing SQL Servers will now have to consider the total core count across all processors in each server they purchase, where previously they only needed to know the processor count. The change in SQL Server licensing mirrors how some Microsoft competitors license their technology, but it is less complex in some cases. For example, some vendors attempt to use methods such as a software-based performance benchmark to license software based on the actual workload capability of the processors on a system.

SQL Server core licenses will be sold in 2-core packs. Regardless of the actual core count, every processor licensed per-core requires a minimum of two 2-core packs four core licenses. The rules for counting cores vary by processor architecture and depend on whether SQL Server is run directly on a server or in a virtual machine VM.

For physical OSEs, the number of core licenses required for SQL Server depends on the total number of physical cores in each processor within the licensed server.

Making a subset of the cores within the server inaccessible to SQL Server e. What matters is the actual or physical number of cores in each processor. The number of cores or other execution units visible to Windows as logical processors outside of physical cores also does not affect the calculation.

See the illustration " Understanding Logical Processors ". The effective number of cores in a server depends on the number and type of processors it has. Each processor is considered to have an effective number of cores equal to the physical core count in the processor, multiplied by a processor-dependent "core factor" in a table published on Microsoft's Web site.

For most processors, the core factor is one, so the rule is simple: One core license is required per physical core in the processor. The Select and Select Plus programs are designed for midsize organizations with a distributed infrastructure. They support affiliate licensing and include Software Assurance.

They have one differing feature - the Select license expires after three years, but the Select Plus license has no expiry date, allowing the organization to benefit from fixed pricing and favorable contractual terms beyond the initial contractual period.

In all other feature areas, Select and Select Plus are identical. The final group includes Software Assurance as standard. Features include volume pricing - significantly lower than for other agreements - inclusive SA, cloud service support, license management assistance, lower up-front costs and flexible subscriptions.

EA is the standard agreement where licensing needs are driven by the organization and can be thought of as a one-size-fits-all solution. The type of licensing you will purchase will be dependent on the edition of SQL Server which you purchase, which will be dependent on the features you expect from SQL Server.

SQL Server comes in the following editions:. Each edition has limitations on the licensing models that can be used to purchase it. Please see my interpretation below, illustrating which licensing models can be used with which editions. The Express and Compact Editions are free, and do not require licenses.

Microsoft also provides a table with this information in the document entitled 'SQL Server Licensing Reference Guide', which is linked to at the end of this tip. Follow the arrows in the diagram below from your desired edition of SQL Server or from your current licensing model to find which editions or licensing models are suitable for you:.

Each edition of SQL Server differs in features. For example, Developer Edition has all the features of Enterprise Edition, but cannot be used in a commercial environment. Standard Edition does not include features such as table partitioning, online index rebuilds or backup compression. Express Edition will handle databases up to 10GB in size only. Since the focus of this discussion is on licensing models rather than a blow-by-blow account of feature differences between editions, please see the More Links section for information on the different features of SQL Server and how they compare in order to make the best choice of edition for your organization's needs.

The document 'What's New in SQL Server ' has a good summary of new features and their availability between versions, while those of you familiar with these restrictions in R2 and below will note that most restrictions still apply. See below for Microsoft's one-page summary of the feature sets that come with Enterprise, Business Intelligence and Standard Editions note this is not a complete list :.

For example, if your organization employs people, 20 of whom work in the Finance department which has two SQL Server installations on two separate servers, 2 server licenses and 20 CALs would be required. Starting with , Microsoft recognized the shift onto core-based computing, where two or more cores are used for parallelism and better efficiency on production IT systems.

Microsoft decided to capitalize on this and protect the licensing fees which would arguably suffer as focus shifted from increasing the number of processors to increasing the number of cores.

The new core-based system means each core used in a SQL Server installation must be licensed separately with some exceptions, see below.

These licenses are sold in 'packs' of two and one pack of two is roughly equivalent in price to the older per-processor license. Thus, although more licenses are required and other factors such as price adjustment and inflation have affected the price , there may not be a significant difference to the overall price when relicensing for , depending on your circumstances.

Note that hyper threading is ignored for core licensing purposes when licensing physical servers. However - something called 'Core Factor' comes into play here. Core factor refers to the factor one must multiply by when determining the licenses required, depending on the type of processor one has.

AMD processors are licensed differently from Intel ones. And non-Intel, non-AMD processors are licensed differently still. Here are the rules:. Note that when ordering the licenses, you must divide the number of licenses by two to determine how many 'packs' to order.

Don't order double the amount you need by accident! As you can see, this isn't an entirely fair model. A four-core Intel processor requires 16 licenses even though performance-wise it will be thoroughly outstripped by two processors with two cores each, due to increased parallelism.

For this reason, in a single-core architecture, you may wish to make sacrifices with e. Microsoft stipulate that for those customers installing SQL Server in virtual environments, a core license is required for every virtual core in the virtual environment that is supported by one hardware thread this means physical processor core OR hyperthread.

Be very wary when using hyperthreading on physical machines that support VMs, as licensing costs can double despite having no additional physical computing power! This means that if there exists a VM with multiple virtual cores, one license is required for each virtual core even if supported by fewer hardware threads than cores. However, if multiple hardware threads are supporting fewer cores, one license is required for each hardware thread. Core factoring does not apply for VMs.

There is a minimum four licenses required per VM regardless of VM cores. In example number 3 above, the VM is under provisioned against the physical machine so you may wish to add more VMs so that VM core licensing is appropriate to get better value for or even save money , or turn off hyperthreading, or go for maximum virtualization see below for more details to remove the need to license per core on each VM.

Note that physical licensing wins out over virtual licensing. Microsoft call this 'Licensing for Maximum Virtualization' and enables you to disregard your VM cores, so should you decide to have more VM cores than physical ones you will not necessarily be penalized.

So if you decide to physically license your cores even though you're running VMs, you will be able to run SQL Server in VMs up to a maximum number equal to the number of physical core licenses you hold. For example, if you have a large server with 8 processors, 6 cores per processor, you will require 48 core licenses. But this will allow you to run up to 48 VMs with an unlimited number of cores per VM.

If you wanted dual-core VMs, under the virtualization core licensing model you would be required to purchase 96 licenses, but by purchasing core licenses for the physical processors you could be required to purchase half that amount. If SA is purchased on Enterprise Edition and all physical core licenses are purchased, the one-license-per-VM rule is waived and customers are allowed to use an unlimited number of instances on an unlimited number of VMs on that server.