Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion)
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@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):
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.
A BIOS lock means that it requires a license that comes from the BIOS of certain hardware. In this case, it has to detect a valid Lenovo BIOS to be licensed. Basically, Lenovo worked out a deal for their machines to get a discount in this specific case for this one specific product.
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@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):
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.
CDW lists a lot of things that you can't actually buy. From the page, yes it looks like it meets the needs if you are using Lenovo gear (please tell me you aren't running that stuff!) But the general rule applies, if something looks too good to be true, it is. There is likely something very off here, like it's not actually available, or can only be purchased with a new server, or something else that they "forgot" to include on the info page.
You can call CDW and ask and see if they will indemnify you if they get things wrong for getting a hugely expensive product basically for free. If they will stand behind the license, hey, go for it.
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@scottalanmiller 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):
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.
A BIOS lock means that it requires a license that comes from the BIOS of certain hardware. In this case, it has to detect a valid Lenovo BIOS to be licensed. Basically, Lenovo worked out a deal for their machines to get a discount in this specific case for this one specific product.
Balls. That's kind of what I had assumed.
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@scottalanmiller 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):
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.
CDW lists a lot of things that you can't actually buy. From the page, yes it looks like it meets the needs if you are using Lenovo gear (please tell me you aren't running that stuff!) But the general rule applies, if something looks too good to be true, it is. There is likely something very off here, like it's not actually available, or can only be purchased with a new server, or something else that they "forgot" to include on the info page.
You can call CDW and ask and see if they will indemnify you if they get things wrong for getting a hugely expensive product basically for free. If they will stand behind the license, hey, go for it.
I didn't really think it was going to be true but I was still hoping there was a chance. I will check with my CDW sales rep and see what he can offer, if anything.
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https://mangolassi.it/topic/17915/verifying-ms-sql-server-2017-licensing/8
Obviously if your VLSC deal is better this will be slightly lower. But, nope $30k is right for 16 cores.
The question is why the fuck use 16 cores? Virtualize it, on this same hardware, assign all the resources, but only give it 8 procs and you halve your cost.
edit: @scottalanmiller need tags..
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@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):
@scottalanmiller 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):
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.
CDW lists a lot of things that you can't actually buy. From the page, yes it looks like it meets the needs if you are using Lenovo gear (please tell me you aren't running that stuff!) But the general rule applies, if something looks too good to be true, it is. There is likely something very off here, like it's not actually available, or can only be purchased with a new server, or something else that they "forgot" to include on the info page.
You can call CDW and ask and see if they will indemnify you if they get things wrong for getting a hugely expensive product basically for free. If they will stand behind the license, hey, go for it.
I didn't really think it was going to be true but I was still hoping there was a chance. I will check with my CDW sales rep and see what he can offer, if anything.
Yeah, that's the way to go.
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@jaredbusch said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):
https://mangolassi.it/topic/17915/verifying-ms-sql-server-2017-licensing/8
Obviously if your VLSC deal is better this will be slightly lower. But, nope $30k is right for 16 cores.
The question is why the fuck use 16 cores? Virtualize it, on this same hardware, assign all the resources, but only give it 8 procs and you halve your cost.
edit: @scottalanmiller need tags..
Yeah, that's WAY too many cores for even a massive database.
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tagged
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If you're only using SQL for a single, third-party application, you may be able to purchase a Runtime licence via the third-party, which is considerably cheaper. Its not something I've ever done, so don't know the specifics.
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@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):
https://mangolassi.it/topic/17915/verifying-ms-sql-server-2017-licensing/8
Obviously if your VLSC deal is better this will be slightly lower. But, nope $30k is right for 16 cores.
The question is why the fuck use 16 cores? Virtualize it, on this same hardware, assign all the resources, but only give it 8 procs and you halve your cost.
edit: @scottalanmiller need tags..
Yeah, that's WAY too many cores for even a massive database.
Yeah, actually on my first server build, I only had a single 8-core CPU which was a Xeon Gold but then I did a different build and ended up with 2x Xeon Silver CPU's which brought down the hardware price a bit. I wasn't thinking SQL pricing right then, so I will probably go back to the single CPU with 8 cores and, as you said, half my cost on SQL licensing.
On that subject of single vs dual CPU with regards to MS SQL Server: Would a single 8-core CPU be sufficient? We currently are running a single 6-core CPU which seems to do fine, but it's running SQL 2008 R2 Standard. I wasn't sure if I would get a performance boost by adding more CPU/cores for better performance and database growth down the road. As expected, you guys are expressing that it's a waste.
For our environment, we have about 75 users but only about 30 of them use this database application on the regular. We typically add documents to the database each day, with indexing probably being the most intense task being performed by the server. We have about 15k customers worth of documents.
- Current CPU config I have: Two "Xeon Silver 4110 2.1G, 8C/16T, 9.6GT/s, 11M Cache, Turbo, HT (85W) DDR4-2400"
- Single 8-core CPU I was looking at: One "Xeon Gold 6134 3.2G,8C/16T,10.4GT/s, 24.75M Cache,Turbo,HT (130W) DDR4-2666"
EDIT:
Actually, I may do two "Intel Xeon Silver 4112 2.6G, 4C/8T, 9.6GT/s, 8.25M Cache, Turbo, HT (85W) DDR4-2400" for a total of 8 cores.. -
@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):
On that subject of single vs dual CPU with regards to MS SQL Server: Would a single 8-core CPU be sufficient? We currently are running a single 6-core CPU which seems to do fine, but it's running SQL 2008 R2 Standard. I wasn't sure if I would get a performance boost by adding more CPU/cores for better performance and database growth down the road. As expected, you guys are expressing that it's a waste.
Newer SQL Server is faster than old SQL Server. Modern cores are much faster than older cores. If six old cores running old code is fine, six new cores running newer code will be far better.
So you are already talking about a potentially large boost, even before adding more cores.
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@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):
EDIT:
Actually, I may do two "Intel Xeon Silver 4112 2.6G, 4C/8T, 9.6GT/s, 8.25M Cache, Turbo, HT (85W) DDR4-2400" for a total of 8 cores..For a single database server? That makes you do NUMA without benefit. Stick to a single CPU if you can.
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@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):
For our environment, we have about 75 users but only about 30 of them use this database application on the regular. We typically add documents to the database each day, with indexing probably being the most intense task being performed by the server. We have about 15k customers worth of documents.
We have 100,000 users and are talking about trying to squeeze into two cores!
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@scottalanmiller 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):
For our environment, we have about 75 users but only about 30 of them use this database application on the regular. We typically add documents to the database each day, with indexing probably being the most intense task being performed by the server. We have about 15k customers worth of documents.
We have 100,000 users and are talking about trying to squeeze into two cores!
With MS SQL Server core licensing, it is a 4 core minimum, so don't bother squeezing into 2.
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@scottalanmiller 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):
On that subject of single vs dual CPU with regards to MS SQL Server: Would a single 8-core CPU be sufficient? We currently are running a single 6-core CPU which seems to do fine, but it's running SQL 2008 R2 Standard. I wasn't sure if I would get a performance boost by adding more CPU/cores for better performance and database growth down the road. As expected, you guys are expressing that it's a waste.
Newer SQL Server is faster than old SQL Server. Modern cores are much faster than older cores. If six old cores running old code is fine, six new cores running newer code will be far better.
So you are already talking about a potentially large boost, even before adding more cores.
That's what I thought!!
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@scottalanmiller 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):
EDIT:
Actually, I may do two "Intel Xeon Silver 4112 2.6G, 4C/8T, 9.6GT/s, 8.25M Cache, Turbo, HT (85W) DDR4-2400" for a total of 8 cores..For a single database server? That makes you do NUMA without benefit. Stick to a single CPU if you can.
hmm.. non-uniform memory access.. So having two processors and, say, 96GB of RAM (6x 16GB sticks) would not be shared by the processors equally thus not adding anything to performance? Another thing I need to educate myself on..
Can you help me understand how there would be no benefit?
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@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.
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@dave247 said in Need some help with SQL Server 2016 Standard licensing (price confusion):
@scottalanmiller 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):
EDIT:
Actually, I may do two "Intel Xeon Silver 4112 2.6G, 4C/8T, 9.6GT/s, 8.25M Cache, Turbo, HT (85W) DDR4-2400" for a total of 8 cores..For a single database server? That makes you do NUMA without benefit. Stick to a single CPU if you can.
hmm.. non-uniform memory access.. So having two processors and, say, 96GB of RAM (6x 16GB sticks) would not be shared by the processors equally thus not adding anything to performance? Another thing I need to educate myself on..
Can you help me understand how there would be no benefit?
Yeah, memory has to be accessed THROUGH the other processor, as the cache is split. It's not that it has no benefit, it's that it is worth.
Processors talking to each other has overhead. Why add overhead for no reason? We only ever add a second processor when we can't get the necessary capacity in a single processor.
Which gets across the country more quickly... a single car that holds four people, or two cars that each hold two people and can't get more the one car length away from the other car?
Two cars is more costly, has more overhead, and more "locks" to slow things down. A single car with twice the capacity is faster - the carrying capacity isn't the only factor of how fast you can get from point to point.
Just as two cores of 1GHz is slower than one core of 2GHz, two CPUs of 4 cores is slower than one CPU of 8 cores, at the same speed (and core type.) It's just less efficient.
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@scottalanmiller 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):
@scottalanmiller 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):
EDIT:
Actually, I may do two "Intel Xeon Silver 4112 2.6G, 4C/8T, 9.6GT/s, 8.25M Cache, Turbo, HT (85W) DDR4-2400" for a total of 8 cores..For a single database server? That makes you do NUMA without benefit. Stick to a single CPU if you can.
hmm.. non-uniform memory access.. So having two processors and, say, 96GB of RAM (6x 16GB sticks) would not be shared by the processors equally thus not adding anything to performance? Another thing I need to educate myself on..
Can you help me understand how there would be no benefit?
Yeah, memory has to be accessed THROUGH the other processor, as the cache is split. It's not that it has no benefit, it's that it is worth.
Processors talking to each other has overhead. Why add overhead for no reason? We only ever add a second processor when we can't get the necessary capacity in a single processor.
Which gets across the country more quickly... a single car that holds four people, or two cars that each hold two people and can't get more the one car length away from the other car?
Two cars is more costly, has more overhead, and more "locks" to slow things down. A single car with twice the capacity is faster - the carrying capacity isn't the only factor of how fast you can get from point to point.
Just as two cores of 1GHz is slower than one core of 2GHz, two CPUs of 4 cores is slower than one CPU of 8 cores, at the same speed (and core type.) It's just less efficient.
ooh ok that makes sense. So to your analogy, you'd only take two cars if you needed to take more people than one car can carry. We only add a second CPU when we're using more than one CPU can handle and not when any given CPU is under-used.
Thanks!
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@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.
I did not realize that the license + CAL route allowed unlimited instances and/or cores. And we actually have a few other SQL Server 2008 R2 servers that need to be refreshed soon (a few are virtual and two are physical).
I could check with my Microsoft partner, who is actually also our Dell VAR... so I'm probably in need of finding a separate person who is solely a MS Partner and not a salesman.. unless I mean something other than partner.
