@scottalanmiller said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @phlipelder said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): @dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion): Hi friends. I am working on building a new physical server to replace one which is running older versions of Windows and SQL server, plus it is almost out of storage space so this needs to be done sooner than later. This SQL server is running a 3rd party application and they currently only support up to SQL 2016, so that's what I have to install - not 2017. And it's going to be SQL 2016 Standard Edition running on Windows 2016 Server Standard with 16 cores. I spent a while researching SQL sever licensing to try and get an idea of how much it's going to cost. I haven't dealt with SQL server licensing yet. First, I assumed that I would still have to purchase SQL Server 2017 core licenses with downgrade rights. So looking on the SQL Sever Pricing page, it looks as though Standard - per core price is $3,717 (2 pack). So if my server has a total of 16 cores, this is going to cost about $29,736 to cover SQL licensing. Then I checked over on CDW just to get an idea of prices and things and I had the idea to search "SQL 2016" when I found this: SQL Server 2016 Standard - license - 16 cores - with Server 2016 Standard for like $1,900. Is this even applicable to what I'm doing or am I missing something? It does say in the technical details "BIOS locked (Lenovo)" but I have no idea what that refers to. But other than that, it looks like it's licensing SQL Server 2016 for 16 cores and bundled with Windows Server 2016. Surly this can't be correct... or is it? If it is actually what I would need to be covered, I would purchase it, of course. Otherwise, can someone help me get an idea of what I should be paying for SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition for 16 cores if not the cost I initially calculated ($29,736)? And I don't think we'd do the server + cal licensing as we have about 80 users and 100 or more systems which would connect to the SQL server. Simple rule of thumb to ask your Microsoft licensing rep for the following: First option is license + CALs that allows internal access only with unlimited instances on the server and unlimited cores: SQL Server Standard License SQL Server Standard User CALs (80 Users) Second option is per core with a minimum of 4 to purchase: SQL Server Standard Per Core 2-Pack (2x) In the Per Core scenario we can license for the number of physical cores to use and delimit that in SQL Studio Management. When it comes to audit, a snip of that setting that only allows the four threads should be just fine. So if you license + CAL, do you have to cover all users AND computers? If you license by user you cover users. If you license by device you cover devices. Well what constitutes as a device? I mean, users use a device to connect to the SQL server... so wouldn't I have to cover both? I don't get it. That is never how Microsoft CALs have worked. ok, I finally re-read the overview.. makes sense again. We have a pretty even user/device ratio with slight fluctuations in both over time. I suppose we'd just do user CALs.. There is almost no reason for anyone in the normal, day to day, business world to use device CALs. Agreed, this is super specific niche stuff normally reserved for manufacturing shift work. We have a few clients that run two or three shifts across one or more facilities. A shared device by two or three peeps per day is about the only time we've ever deployed Device CALs.

@dbeato said in Azure Ethereum Network: @irj said in Azure Ethereum Network: You can now build your own Ethereum Network in Azure. I am sure we will start seeing blockchain integrated into Office 365 in the future. Definitely Interesting! https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-stack/azure-stack-ethereum Interesting for sure. I am pretty damn excited! I got into both Microsft Blockchain workshops at Microsoft Ignite! I am going to get a hands on look at this!!!!

@dustinb3403 said in Verifying MS SQL Server 2017 Licensing: @jaredbusch said in Verifying MS SQL Server 2017 Licensing: @scottalanmiller said in Verifying MS SQL Server 2017 Licensing: @jaredbusch said in Verifying MS SQL Server 2017 Licensing: @scottalanmiller said in Verifying MS SQL Server 2017 Licensing: @jaredbusch one of the complications is that there IS no virtual core. vCPU is NOT core. a vCPU has vCores. Always. It might just be one. That is how it works. Not in any system I've seen. What people call vCores are actually vCPUs. The vCPU might tell the OS it has multiple cores, but the idea of a vCore has never existed, only vCPUs. Vmware, KVM, etc. all the same. Core means physical, it's like having a physical virtual, it cancels itself out. I am almost certain that VMWare lets you make a 1 CPU VM with 2 cores. Hyper-V just says virtual processors. KVM says CPUs. But I very clearly remember some hypervisor letting me specify a vCPU and vCores. XenServer and XCP-ng also allow this. 1cpu 2 core etc. Topology lets you state presented cores, not vCores. Totally different things.

@brrabill said in Nextcloud replacing OneDrive: @scottalanmiller said in Nextcloud replacing OneDrive: @brrabill said in Nextcloud replacing OneDrive: Hmmm, sounds like one of those "MS messed up" scenarios we were discussing in the backup thread(s). Yes, but it's also a "it didn't lose them their data" because they had local copies, scenarios we were also discussing. So a good example of both. Actually it sounded like MS found them and put them back. Local copies would also have been removed if they were "deleted" at the MS side. Good point. The real problem here is the "customer shaming" that MS always does. Anytime MS is at fault, they try to shame the customer. Whether it is through official channels or "look the other way" as their engineers go into communities and do it. MS employees are out there attacking any customer that dares to mention that they've had a problem. Like in this thread. Even once MS had admitted the mistake, and fixed it, an MS employee was still on the offensive trying to shame the customer and went ballistic once it was obvious he didn't even know how MS products worked.

@phlipelder said in Is Spamhaus the DDoS Arm of Microsoft: @scottalanmiller BTDT Back in the day the general sentiment was that RBL "services" were no more than extortion rackets. IMNSHO, that has not changed much. With the advent of SPF, DMARC, and DKIM their relevance will become a lot smaller which is a happy. SPF has been around forever, but a lot of mail domains still do not have it setup. DMARC has barely any traction by comparison. DKIM is not even a thing that does anything. DKIM only tells the receiving server what to do with a message that fails SPF or DMARC, instead of the receiving server deciding for itself.

@nerdydad said in 3 steps to maintain the 3-2-1 backup rule: @scottalanmiller said in 3 steps to maintain the 3-2-1 backup rule: @nerdydad said in 3 steps to maintain the 3-2-1 backup rule: @oksana Is there a way of pointing Starwind VTL to a private cloud provider instead of Microsoft blob, Azure AWS, or Backblaze? It's not that easy. What API is that private provider using? ¯＼(ツ)/¯ Then how would they point to it? It's like asking "can I use a thing"? I don't know, depends what that thing is.

@jaredbusch said in Microsoft buys GitHub for $7.5 billion: @obsolesce The only reason I’m not moving my projects to githhub is because I cannot get private repository without paying for it. Gitlab offers that. Yeah that's why I have everything on GitLab as well.

@scottalanmiller said in What Is Expected of Microsoft Server Support?: Did they fix something broken with the OS that IT could not have fixed? There are some quirky poorly documented things that are sometimes need to be done with ESEUTIL, and repairing from corruption, or failed log replays on Exchange and SQL. In theory it's not always Microsofts fault (caused by storage layer issues). The other issue is driver issues for IO devices. In theory this should be transative (supported by teh OEM who agree's to support your OS). That said OEM's often don't support the free OS's because they don't have joint engineering commitements to fix issues on them. RedHat has hard commitments from Avago/Broadcom to fix a driver HBA issue if they find it. Having a Server that has a supported OS means they have Avago's commitment to spend hundreds of thousands of engineering time to fix an issue. Redhat will possibly work to mitigate it from their side if possible. Missing the OS vendor in this conversation/effort can make things move slower or stall. Avago and other component manufactoreres will refuse support calls from a customer who bought the device through an OEM so without the OEM listing your OS as supported you are kinda screwed. (A long time ago) I saw a case where a I/O device had outright buggy silicon, and a driver and OS side workaround was needed to resolve it. This is all the more fun as how the I/O device engineering teams work is they generally refuse to work with a customer directly and require the OS vendor escalate the issue to them.

Where was this when we started our o365 migration!!!

I wouldn't like to see the end of 365, but I would always like to see good competition to Microsoft, a leopard never changes its spots in my eyes and Microsoft have history with all the previous court cases in some of their dodgy practices and monopolisation..they slagged off Linux to high heaven in the older days and now their embracing it? Might be something to do with Microsoft using it as part of their azure backend. You can't doubt they make some excellent products but they have always ripped people off and most of their licencing models are complete shit...I think in a few years people will be moaning to high hell once all their subscription models have been increased through the roof and Microsoft know you won't go over to Google now as their Google apps/g suite has been left in the dust. Microsoft are far from a perfect company and it does iritate me when people di*k ride and never see any fault with them and a lot and most are Linux haters I find as well...

It's a great idea. Amazing they haven't had it up until now. Makes using OneDrive or ODfB so much easier if you can sync locally.

"The recent shift to the cloud has proven immensely profitable, with Microsoft stock growing to levels that seemed unfathomable just a few years ago. The shift away from the client and Windows is clearly working as a business strategy — but it’s a seismic shift for the company and its culture." He seems to figure things out by the end, but just stating what everyone has known for years.