We Answer Your Microsoft Licensing Questions...

Microsoft is one of your organization's most important IT vendors. Microsoft products provide enterprise-wide server installations and critical business applications from Azure to Office 365 and SQL Server.

But keeping up with Microsoft licensing is a huge challenge. To keep your Microsoft costs under control, you need to strategically plan for infrastructure changes and software purchases, especially when migrating to cloud.

We recently asked our Software Asset Management customers to share their most pressing Microsoft licensing questions. In this short article, licensing recommendations are given for the Top 4 Microsoft licensing topics that our SAM team has reviewed.

We recently asked our Software Asset Management customers to share their most pressing Microsoft licensing questions. In this short article, licensing recommendations are given for the Top 4 Microsoft licensing topics that our SAM team has reviewed.

3. SQL Server Software Assurance

Benefits Unlike Windows Server, SQL Server has a unique advantage when you provide Software Assurance in your licenses. Regardless of the situation with Windows Server in virtual environments, you must license physical hosts, as virtual machines can be moved from host to host. However, using Software Assurance on SQL Server allows for "License Mobility", meaning you only need to license the VM when these VMs are migrated.

This is a huge advantage because virtual machines have too few cores to count compared to their physical host counterparts. If you do not have Software Assurance, you must license all physical hosts unless you can fix the virtual machine to a single host, which may not be an ideal configuration. However, this advantage is not always optimal because highly virtualized environments can be licensed less expensive on physical hosts. But in our experience, this is not widely used. Ideally, for these benefits, the additional benefits of being eligible for new metrics are retained in addition to providing Software Assurance across all SQL Server builds (remember the CPU vs Core change in 2012?)

3. SQL Server Software Assurance Benefits Unlike Windows Server, SQL Server has a unique advantage when you provide Software Assurance in your licenses. Regardless of the situation with Windows Server in virtual environments, you must license physical hosts, as virtual machines can be moved from host to host. However, using Software Assurance on SQL Server allows for "License Mobility", meaning you only need to license the VM when these VMs are migrated. This is a huge advantage because virtual machines have too few cores to count compared to their physical host counterparts. If you do not have Software Assurance, you must license all physical hosts unless you can fix the virtual machine to a single host, which may not be an ideal configuration. However, this advantage is not always optimal because highly virtualized environments can be licensed less expensive on physical hosts. But in our experience, this is not widely used. Ideally, for these benefits, the additional benefits of being eligible for new metrics are retained in addition to providing Software Assurance across all SQL Server builds (remember the CPU vs Core change in 2012?)