How Does SQL Server Licensing Work?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Does your specific app vendor provide your database support?
No.
If not, why the concern? PostgreSQL is just as supported as any other enterprise database offering.
Not with Dynamics thought, as far as I know you can only use it with MS SQL (full version, not lite).
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Just a quick update on pricing, here is what I got from my vendor for a current quote:
SQL Server 2014 Core License: $3,322 x 2 = $6,644
or
SQL Server 2014 Standard: $823 + SQL Server 2014 User CAL: $192 x 25 = $4,800 = $5,623
They could honestly get away with only a 2 core License for their current usage, but they decided to go with 4 core license to handle growth.
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If you go core based licensing, you probably have to go four cores any how.
i.e. if you're a VM, MS says you have to license a minimum of 4 cores.
If you're on bare metal you have to license everything in the box - I suppose you could purpose build a 2 core box and then get away with only buying two cores, but that seems wasteful.
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So this SQL 2008 R2, never used copy that I have ready to go...It shows to be 5 CAL's, which is the exact number of Dynamics users I have. So is this acceptable to use or do I need to count our other 45 users who indirectly access SQL by spreadsheet SQL Queries? Just making sure who is counted as a CAL.
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If a user touches SQL directly or indirectly (though an application) you need a license for them.
You'll need licensing to cover those 45 users.
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@Dashrender said:
If a user touches SQL directly or indirectly (though an application) you need a license for them.
You'll need licensing to cover those 45 users.
Got it...I'll check on adding 45 to this one...thanks!
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@garak0410 said:
So this SQL 2008 R2, never used copy that I have ready to go...It shows to be 5 CAL's, which is the exact number of Dynamics users I have. So is this acceptable to use or do I need to count our other 45 users who indirectly access SQL by spreadsheet SQL Queries? Just making sure who is counted as a CAL.
Yep you will, only if those Spreedsheets were completely stand-alone and have the data exported by one of the 5 users you could get away with it.
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@garak0410 said:
@Dashrender said:
If a user touches SQL directly or indirectly (though an application) you need a license for them.
You'll need licensing to cover those 45 users.
Got it...I'll check on adding 45 to this one...thanks!
You will have to buy SQL 2014 CALS to my understanding. So the price should be similar to what I listed above.
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@JaredBusch said:
@garak0410 said:
@Dashrender said:
If a user touches SQL directly or indirectly (though an application) you need a license for them.
You'll need licensing to cover those 45 users.
Got it...I'll check on adding 45 to this one...thanks!
You will have to buy SQL 2014 CALS to my understanding. So the price should be similar to what I listed above.
Which means that Core licensing would save you a bundle!
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Does your specific app vendor provide your database support?
No.
If not, why the concern? PostgreSQL is just as supported as any other enterprise database offering.
The app vendor doesn't support the database, but they don't support the app if it is used with an unsupported database, if you follow me?
Anyway, I'm an SQL Server boy now and that isn't going to change - I've invested time and money into getting proficient so switching for the sake of saving on licencing is false economy. I haven't used Oracle for a few years now. Licencing cost is only one part of the total cost of ownership.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
The app vendor doesn't support the database, but they don't support the app if it is used with an unsupported database, if you follow me?
I'm with ya. Wasn't sure if they did or not. Often they only care that there is a database interface. Since the database is external and elsewhere, they never see the database and all that matters is that, in this case, an Oracle interface is presented. All of their documentation and work would be done as if it were Oracle and unless they were told otherwise or given access to poke around on the database server they would have no way to know that it was not Oracle being used.
It is very surprising that they would take the time to support Oracle and not PostgreSQL. Normally you'd expect PostgreSQL to get precedence today and Oracle to be an afterthought.
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@scottalanmiller said:
PostgreSQL to get precedence today and Oracle to be an afterthought.
Especially considering oracles prices are plain crazy. Though dynamics isn't exactly cheap.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Anyway, I'm an SQL Server boy now and that isn't going to change - I've invested time and money into getting proficient so switching for the sake of saving on licencing is false economy. I haven't used Oracle for a few years now. Licencing cost is only one part of the total cost of ownership.
True, but an enormous one. SQL Server licensing is very expensive and requires Windows licensing as well. And it is recurring every so many years. If you want failover or more cores over time, that licensing cost increases.
In many cases, the difference can be tens of thousands of dollars every so many years (say five.) That's not a ton, but over a decade a continuous savings of a couple thousand dollars per year plus the flexibility to do HA for free or cheap and the ability to run as many cores or users as you want and never have to manage licenses does add up.
Also makes moving to hosted solutions far easier and less expensive.
There is totally value to using what you know and SQL Server is a great product. But there is a large value is moving away too. Unlike Windows vs. Linux where the learning curve is large and the cost savings is small, with databases often the learning curve is smaller between them and the cost savings is much larger.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
PostgreSQL to get precedence today and Oracle to be an afterthought.
Especially considering oracles prices are plain crazy. Though dynamics isn't exactly cheap.
Cost is a factor but not the big one. PostgreSQL is up there in the top echelons of enterprise databases today (it's what IBM ran internally when I was there and IBM owns Informix and DB2!!) and is what most modern development platforms (like Ruby on Rails) as their de facto standard and what most large hosting environments (Heroku, OpenShift) provide as their standard relational database. That is pretty what has propelled it from being a big player to being the database to beat in recent years.
PostgreSQL and SQL Server will likely be the last two big players that matter in the RDBMS space. Even MySQL / MariaDB is fading from the PostgreSQL onslaught these last few years.
The big competition for both is coming from the NoSQL camp, not other RDMBSs.
