SQL Server 2012 Editions and High Availability Licensing
One of the most frequent questions I get asked from customers is which high availability capabilities are available in which editions of SQL Server 2012.
Here are details of SQL Server 2012 Editions and the capabilities: https://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/future-editions/sql2012-editions.aspx.
For more information on SQL Server licensing, read: https://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/future-editions/sql2012-licensing.aspx
Comments
Anonymous
January 09, 2012
Thank you for the clarification as I was curious about that too when I migrate come release time.Anonymous
April 12, 2012
I didn't find any info about licensing the secondary replicas. Do we need licensing all the replicas? We have 4 servers 24 cores each one.(1 Primary and 3 secondary replicas) Thanks in advance!!!Anonymous
May 01, 2012
See pages 11 and 12 of the Licensing Guide - download.microsoft.com/.../SQL_Server_2012_Licensing_Guide_Apr2012.pdf If your secondary servers are passive - additional licensing is not always required. For example: if you have a primary server that is properly licensed with lets say 24 cores, you can install a second instance of SQL on a second server (as long as it has no more than 24 cores) - this is called passive fail over rights. The key points about passive fail over rights are: The secondary server has to be PASSIVE. For each properly licensed server you are given rights to one secondary server (e.g. in a scenario where you have 1 primary active, and 3 secondary passive servers, the primary and 2 of the secondaries would need to be licensed). I hope this answers your question.Anonymous
August 28, 2013
BTW: This SQL 2012 Guide is horrible. You cannot ready they dark gray text on the black background. www.google.com/urlAnonymous
March 04, 2014
Hi All , I had a question .If we have a SQL Server 2012 Std Edition Cluster in Active/Passive and we have it log shipped to another server will we only need to license the active node ? Is the below blog comments also valid for SQL Server 2012 sqlblogcasts.com/.../licence-quot-experts-quot-sql-2008-standard-clustering-and-the-active-passive-requirements.aspxAnonymous
August 24, 2015
of course, these links are auto filled with newest product data vs. 2012. Not helpful.