On the First Day of ECHO, my System Admin gave to me, SQL Licensing!
You probably already know that Microsoft SQL Server is required for Epicor 10 and Prophet 21, but do you know if you are in Microsoft compliance? SQL licensing can be confusing, but in most cases, it can be broken down to either “by core” or “by user”. There is an exception for SQL Enterprise licensing on a hypervisor, but that’s a specialized case. Most smaller organizations use SQL Standard Edition, as opposed to the more expensive and capable Enterprise Edition. Likewise, most Epicor clients use the “By core” licensing model as opposed to the “by user” model.
In short, if you are running SQL In the “per core” licensing model, each 2 cores that are available to the SQL server must have the appropriate licenses – with a minimum 4 cores. If you have more than one SQL server, then you must have a minimum of 4 cores licensed PER server! Keep in mind that the SQL Engine and the SQL Reporting Services are both licensed software, and if they are split to different servers, they EACH must have appropriate licenses.
We’ve seen instances of clients who increase their SQL Server CPU core count to see if they get faster processing, but often end up violating their license agreement and creating expensive problems when Microsoft Auditors come knocking. Likewise, splitting the SQL Engine and the SSRS functions will increase your license count.
One small consolation prize – multiple instances of SQL on the same OS do not require additional licensing beyond the first instance. Therefore, you might find some benefit to running another SQL instance on the same server to split queries. (See our future blog 11th Day of ECHO: Separating OLTP and DS – detecting and avoiding deadlocks)
The downside is that all SQL licenses are on an honor system – the application does NOT keep track of licenses, so it’s your job to make sure you’re in compliance!
Till next time, keep the holiday cheer!
If you liked reading the “Second Day of ECHO” return to our main list to read all of the other “12 Days of ECHO” posts.
Do you need assistance managing your SQL licenses or database administration? Please feel free to Contact Us and see if we can help get your bits and bytes in order.
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