(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — On Monday, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 became available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers in Enterprise, Standard, Web, and Workgroup editions, as well as the new Developer edition. And, while it eases the burden of managing, accessing and delivering information organization wide, users may find that the cost of running their operations in some virtualized Microsoft SQL Server configurations could, in fact, balloon with the latest release.
In previous incarnations, Enterprise Edition had offered unlimited virtualization rights for all licensed processors in a system. A report from SearchSQLServer.com, an online resource for SQL Server professionals, points out that SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition only supports up to four virtual instances. “To gain unlimited virtualization rights, customers will need to purchase the new Datacenter Edition, which costs twice as much as Enterprise Edition: $54,990 per processor (without Software Assurance), compared to $27,495.”
With SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft has added Datacenter Edition and the upcoming Parallel Data Warehouse Edition for virtualization environments, and has limited virtualization privileges in the Enterprise Edition upon the R2 release.
Quest Software’s (www.quest.com) Brent Ozar offers the following advice to administrators: “If I was a DBA with a budget to buy SQL Server licenses this year, I’d make that purchase now. In May, Enterprise Edition’s price is going up, and it will have less licensed features. I’d buy it with Software Assurance anyway, so I’ll get R2′s new features if I want them. If I didn’t want those new features, I’d still have the flexibility of running unlimited SQL Server 2008 instances in virtualization.”
Microsoft told SearchSQLServer.com via email that the licensing revision impacts very few IT shops. “We think that this will affect a very few customers,” wrote Microsoft senior marketing manager for worldwide licensing and pricing Joanna Sharpe in an email. “We don’t believe anyone who is virtualizing is doing more than four VMs per processor.”
