SQL 2012 New Licensing scheme under virtualization

Looking at SQL Server licensing today, we could actually save some money based on how it is licensed under a Virtualization scenario. An example is as follows:

SCENARIO: You have a 2 X Quad Core Processor in the Host Server, and had SQL Server installed in a virtual machine. In the Virtual Machine, you assigned 4 Virtual CPUs.

LICENSING CALC: To license the SQL Server on Processor licensing, we would calculate as follows:
                                  
                                   [no. of Virtual CPUs] / [no. of total physical cores] = 4 / 8 = 0.5
                                  
                                   Round up the result to the nearest whole number = 1      
                                  
                                   This means that you would need to license it with 1 Processor License

This is huge savings as you would only need to purchase 1 Proc license even though the Host Server had 2 Processors.


This will change in the upcoming launch of SQL Server 2012.

SQL Server 2012 will have 2 licensing models.

1. The traditional Server + CAL licensing
2. The new Core based license

Under this new licensing structure, when purchasing the neccessary license for SQL Server in a Virtual Machine, you would have to purchase it based on the no. of Virtual Cores assigned to the VM. Therefore if you had assigned 4 Cores, then you would have to purchase SQL Server Enterprise 2012 with 4 Cores. Microsoft currently states also that the minimum purchase for Cores type structure is 4 Cores.

I am waiting on the actual pricing to see how this plays out on a costing play field. Then we can make our conclusions on how this will affect Virtualization based SQL installations.

Here is the official Microsoft site: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/future-editions/sql2012-licensing.aspx