Licensing SQL Server 2022 on premise per core

Hello Velázquez Paulín Tania Noemi,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A!

Regarding your question, it’s important to note that Microsoft requires licensing for the full physical core count of the server, regardless of how many cores are actually used by SQL Server. This means that even if you disable 8 out of 32 cores, you would still need to license all 32 cores.

If you want to reduce licensing costs, you might consider using virtualization. By creating virtual machines (VMs) with a specific number of virtual cores, you can license only those virtual cores. This approach can be more cost-effective and flexible.

I hope the information provided was useful, I will be waiting for your response.

Best Regards,

Gao.

If the answer is the right solution, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.