SQL Server 2012 Adopts Per-Core Licensing Model

Apart from limited-time exceptions for certain existing customers, the latest version of SQL Server no longer offers a per-processor licensing model for any edition. SQL Server 2012 (formerly code-named Denali), which officially became available in Apr. 2012, has a per-core licensing model, where each physical core within each processor must be licensed individually. Required with Enterprise edition and one of two supported licensing models for Standard edition, the move to per-core licensing will result in higher costs for some high-end servers going forward. Organizations that move quickly might be able to reduce some of the impact.

The Road to Per-Core Licensing

Since SQL Server 2000, two licensing models have been offered for SQL Server. The first, the server-Client Access License (CAL) model, which requires a license for each server and one for each client user or device accessing it, remains largely unchanged in SQL Server 2012 for the editions that continue to offer it.

The second, the per-processor model, licenses the product for each physical processor (sometimes called a socket) in the server. This model is useful in situations where client devices and users cannot be counted or the costs of doing so would be financially prohibitive, such as servers connected to the Internet. In general, the per-processor model roughly aligns SQL Server license costs with the capacity of the server being licensed, regardless of how many clients may ever connect to it. However, hardware developments over the past several years have broken the link between a server’s capacity and the number of physical processors it has. Processors are now almost all multicore: Each physical processor contains multiple processing units (cores), each of which can run an independent sequence of instructions in parallel. Manufacturers now ship processors with as many as 10 cores per physical processor, giving each individual processor more parallel capacity than entire servers had when the per-processor model was introduced with SQL Server 2000.