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Microsoft Server Licensing (SQL)

We are planning a browser application (xbap) that is going to talk with WCF services. These WCF services retrieve information from an SQL database. Each of our customers has its own database on this server. Customers need to receive reports from SQL Reporting Services. A client may have multiple instances of this application.

How does this work with licensing? We thought about starting with 1 server, on which MSSQL and IIS work on a Windows server (although I could distract them from the very beginning). So, will it be 1 license for Server 2008 and 1 for SQL2008? With the addition for each user? Then each client is a user or each employee of our clients? Is it the same for reporting services or is it part of SQL2008? I'm confused...

Extras: I heard from this company, which received an invoice for about $ 100,000 because they used reporting services with the wrong license. Their web application was described as a regular application because they used reporting services. We are trying to prevent this.

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Using all SQL Server 2008 products (Enterprise, Standard, Workgroup, and Web Server), you are licensed to choose:

  • There is a version of Webserver that mainly takes care of using a SQL server in a web application.
  • Client Access Licenses (CALs) are mostly not interesting if you get more than 25 users.
  • The processor license is the most expensive, but provides maximum flexibility.

You need to be careful: strictly speaking, for a website, if you do not come with a special version of the web server or a processor license, you must take into account that each web client (the web user there) will need its own CAL.
If you just buy the cheapest version of CAL SQL Server Standard (or Workgroup), you won’t meet the requirements.

Compliance is not enforced by SQL Server software: you need to make sure that you have enough licenses to cover your needs in case of control.

Depending on the functions you need, you will need to get one of the available versions :

  • Enterprise - all bells and whistles, very expensive, unlimited CPU / RAM.
  • The standard is very complete. 4 CPU / No RAM limitation. Much cheaper than Enterprise Edition, but still quite expensive.
  • Working group - limited to 2 CPUs, no RAM limit. A bit cheaper than the Standard.
  • Express is free but limited to 1 GB of RAM, 1 CPU, and a 4 GB database.

Not all functionality is available for all versions , but usually if your initial needs are modest to begin with, just download the free version of Express Edition, then move around to suit your actual needs.

Pricing examples and some licensing explanations are available on the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 website .

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A processor license may be the best. But in order to answer your question, you can usually purchase CALS “on device” or “per user” for your software. It is as if it sounds. If you have one computer that will access SQL Server with multiple users on that same computer, then CALS makes sense on the device. If, however, as a rule, you will have one user per computer, then it makes sense to buy CALS "per user".

A processor license for SQL Server Std is actually not that expensive. We paid about $ 3,000 for this license.

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