Hello everyone,



It has been quite some time since I was on the forums. I need to get back into the habit of reading the new entries every day. When I was doing that, I was learning something new just about every day.



We are looking at adding a new SQL Server to our environment. Our current environment has one SQL Server 2000 installed. We would like to add a second, physical server to our remote location and keep them synchronized through replication services. 2005 Standard is supported in the SF environment, so we are going to head that way with the version of the database; however, I was hoping someone could shed some light on the licensing issue. It is quite expensive to license SQL Server for the processor(s). At the moment, our SF application uses one user to access the database to perform data operations. That will stay the same. Should I simply include a 5 user CAL to the installation? Would that be enough?



Sorry for my ignorance. My head is swimming with all of the options. Thanks for any insight on this...much appreciated!

Bill

Well, this is an easier question to answer on the technical side than the licensing side.  If you are using ES (Enterprise Server) it will be the only entity actually touching the server.  However, SQL Server licensing dictates that a CAL should exist for every person that will be accessing the server.  If you are not using the ES, then you need to have enough CALs for each user to access the server simultanesouly (on the technical side).  So if you are goin to have have 5 users working at the same time, then you will have potentially 5 connections to the server.  However, this goes back to SQL licensing as well, if you are going to have 15 users accessing the server at any time (aside from a web environment) then you must have a CAL for each user.  This is how the licensing is supposed to work.  But from the sound of it, the 5 CALs might meet your needs on teh technical side.  Since I don't know anything on the number of users I can't advise you on the licensing, but that is how the technical side should work.

Thanks, Trent! Our current server is setup as per server (aka per processor...only one) licensing. I was hoping to limit the cost of a new server; however, since we are not using SF Enterprise Server we will likely go with the same licensing arrangement for the new server. This will help with other apps that utilize the server, too (Dynamics GP, Powerway, Calibration Manager, etc.).



Take care,

Bill

There are basically two ways to license SQL server. One is to purchase a license for each server and a client access license for each user or device that will access the server/s. The other is to purchase a processor license for each CPU (no extra charge fo multi-core) in your server. The processor license doesn't require individual CALs so you can have as many users as your server hardware will support. Processor licenses are expensive, about $5600 for SQL Server 2008 standard. From you description it sounds like the server/CAL model is what you need. SQL server 2008 Standard is around $900 per server and $150 per CAL. If you have a Microsoft Open License or Select agreement the prices are lower.

In SQL 2008, Microsoft has put all the really cool features like transparent data encryption into the Enterprise edition only. If you need SQL Enterprise the cost goes way up but the licensing model remains the same.

Thanks, Larry! As I understand it, the break even point is around 30 users (depending on the discounts). We have about 65 users who may need to access either server depending on the availability (power outage, T1 breakdowns, etc.). We would definitely make out better with the per server pricing (only one processor needed...dual or quad core, of course). Hope I am seeing this correctly.