New report optimizes licenses for SQL Server

FlexNet Manager Suite version 2021 R1.3

Microsoft offers two main alternatives for licensing SQL Server:

• SQL Server Enterprise, which covers an unlimited number of virtual machines (VMs) with installations of any edition of Microsoft SQL Server on the host, with capping applied according to the number of cores available in each host (and consumption is summed at the host level, so that capping can be applied)
• SQL Server Standard, which must be applied separated to each VM with an installation of Microsoft SQL Server Standard Edition, with a minimum of four cores per VM.

These choices can be quite time-consuming to manage, and many enterprises choose the first option as the simplest and safest path. However, a new report in FlexNet Manager Suite now assesses the latest inventory for every consuming device (including stand-alone servers, virtual hosts with VMs running SQL Server, and even orphan VMs where the host cannot be identified) for three different scenarios:

• Covering all installations with a SQL Server Enterprise license
• Covering all installations (within a cluster) with a SQL Server Standard license (of course, only for those clusters where only SQL Server Standard Edition is installed)
• Licensing a host where each VM is running Microsoft SQL Server Standard edition with the SQL Server Standard license, and hosts where VMs are running Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition with the SQL Server Enterprise license (this may provide a better optimized result than is currently available within FlexNet Manager Suite, which takes the default of applying SQL Server Enterprise licenses to any host where any VM is running that Edition of the software).

For each cluster, the report then recommends whichever of those scenarios yields the lowest cost. This can point the way to significant cost savings at your next license or maintenance renewal.