Licensing SQL Server Under the Server/CAL Model

Many SQL Server customers have a significant portion of their deployed SQL Servers licensed under the Server/CAL License Model, which generally requires a server license for each server running SQL Server and a Client Access License (CAL) for each client user or device accessing these servers. However, licensing and packaging changes over the past several product releases mean organizations have to understand the current rules to decide whether it is appropriate to continue licensing SQL Server under the Server/CAL model or to transition to the alternative Per-Core model to ensure license compliance.

(For a summary of Server/CAL licensing and packaging changes made from version 2012 through version 2016, see the chart “Server/CAL Licensing Rules for Recent SQL Server Versions“.)

Licensing Rules for SQL Server Editions

SQL Server 2016 offers two editions of the product for production use—Enterprise and Standard. Enterprise edition is the full-featured edition of SQL Server, and Standard edition contains a subset of the features of Enterprise edition (also known as a Russian doll model).