SQL Server Licensing for High Availability

Licensing is always complex and sometime we cannot figure out the number of licenses we have to buy for the production. It is always better to contact someone from Microsoft for licensing because it is not always as we think, it gets changed with many options.

This post is not about how to decide the number of licenses you need for Microsoft SQL Server, it is about the licenses you have to buy when you configure High Availability.

There are two models in SQL Server Licensing; Server + CAL and Core based. If you the devices and users connect to SQL Server and it is not much, Server + CAL model works well with it. If the number of connections are unknown and expect many connections, then Core-based model is the best. However, you need to calculate the cost and compare before making the decision.

We use many techniques for implementing High Availability, we can use Log Shipping, Mirroring (both are deprecated), Clustering and AlwaysOn Availability Group. I was recently working on a similar implementation, had a question whether we need to purchase a license for the secondary server as it is not always active. Do we really need to purchase licenses for the secondary/stand-by server?

This was with Enterprise Edition, hence only model we can use with SQL Server 2016 is Core-based. While searching on this, I found a good resource that explains everything need, here are some I have taken from it.

The resource can be found at: http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/6/9c6eb70a-8d52-48f4-9f04-08970411b7a3/sql_server_2016_licensing_guide_en_us.pdf

First of all, let's see what is the core.

Your CPU can have multiple Processors and a processor can have multiple cores. The above image shows a CPU with 2 processors and processor is a Octo Core Processor that has 8 cores. If you have a CPU like above, you need to buy 16 Core licenses.

When you implement High Availability with Windows Clustering (whether it is Cloud or On-Premises, it is same), one node becomes Active and other node becomes Passive. Since the Passive Node will not be used unless there is a fail-over, it does not requires licenses for its cores.

However, if you use AlwaysOn Availability Group with Windows Clustering and second node will be used as a read-only instance for queries and reporting, then it needs licenses based on the number of cores.