How to Buy the Right SQL Server Edition License

Licensing your SQL Server is a lot like buying a new car for the family. It's very frustrating, it costs about the same and there are a ton of different options to choose from. Let's look at them. Hello there and welcome back to our series on SQL Server licensing. If you're watching this video, you're probably wondering what SQL Server Edition is is right for your business. If so, you're in the right place. In this video I'm going to tell you about the different SQL editions that you can license, what those different editions are best for, and most of all, some low key hidden pitfalls you can run into when licensing SQL Server Editions. Don't forget to stick around till the second half of this video where I expose those four licensing pitfalls and a few tips and tricks to get around them. Oh, and before I forget, if you want to make sure you're making the right call when purchasing a SQL Edition for your organization, you may need more than to just watch this video. What you need is an expert. One call to our experts could potentially save you millions of dollars in it spent. If you'd like to get in contact with them, you can reach out by phone or or send us a message on email instead. Alternatively, you can reach our contact form by clicking the link in the description below. Our experts will reply quickly and get back to you as soon as possible. Anyways, let's get back into SQL Server Edition types. Let's say your boss busts into your office and says we need to use SQL Server as the database engine for an application on either a production or a test environment. And your boss would also like it implemented at the lowest cost possible with all the features that they need implemented as well. So how do you choose the right SQL Server Edition with all the features you need while keeping the cost down? That's a good question, but luckily I'll be answering just that. Why don't you step into my garage where we'll look at all the facts behind the different SQL editions that you can license. Each SQL Server is ripe with their own features to help your startup to enterprise sized business with things like data analytics, web hosting, security, data management, Business intelligence, cloud application, and even things like web hosting. With that being said, let's take a look at them. Lets start off at the bottom of the bunch for this that is SQL Express Edition or editions should I say, because there are actually three of them. These are the most basic of all SQL Server editions. There are three in fact Regular Express Edition Express with Advanced Services and Express Local DB Express Edition is free to use in production environments and is the best choice for independent software vendors whose clients can't afford the cost of a SQL Server license. They are ideal for learning and building small server data driven applications and you can also upgrade to higher versions if you need. Next on the totem pole, One step higher is the Web Edition. This edition has features that web hosting companies can offer their customers to provide scalability, affordability and manageability capabilities for small to large scale web properties. From a scalability perspective, Web and Standard Editions are very similar. But from a feature perspective in Web Edition you won't find services such as Business Intelligence or Master Data Services. This brings us to the middle of the road. The Standard Editions aptly named SQL Standard Edition. Now in Web we talked about you losing a few of those features, but in Standard you get those features back. Yes, you've just made it up to the big leagues of SQL Server and that means you will find things like Business Intelligence and Master Data services available. SQL Server Standard Edition delivers basic data management and Business intelligence services for departments or smaller scale businesses alike to run their applications on. It also supports some development tools for on premises and cloud. This makes it an effective addition to use when you have a little bit lower IT resources such as IT spend or staff. And now for what you're all waiting for. The cream of the crop of sequel editions. That's right, the highest on the totem pole. The King of the castle. This is SQL Enterprise Edition. This is the most complete and premium edition of all. It is the holy grail of SQL Server Editions. With this edition you have unlimited virtualization, the fastest performance and Business intelligence that all come together and enable a high service availability to keep those mission critical pipelines and workloads going. Now this brings us to our next Wildcard Edition. That edition is called the Developer Edition. This Edition has all the features of the Enterprise Edition but cannot be used in production environments. This Edition is used to let developers build applications on top of SQL Server. Anyone using a Developer Edition to access any part of the SQL Server needs to have a license from a MSDN subscription. Developer Editions are not a one size fits all type of deal. There are actually two that are under this type of addition. Number one Developer Specific and number two Evaluation Licenses. Depending on how you're operating under these developer licenses, you could create a compliance risk for your company and with the capabilities a device license can give, it is easy to slip out of compliance. Developer Specific are for non production use only and work best for programmers, database professionals and IT admin Anyone who wishes to access a development environment needs a developer specific license, with the exception being for testing evaluation licenses. Same as before, this license is only good for non production environments and comes with an expiration date of 60 to 180 days, but it is excellent to evaluate the use of software when you purchase one of these editions. They come with their own unique benefits and best use case scenarios. However, they're rife with licensing nuances that can cause a compliance risk in your environment if unchecked. Let's take a look at how that can happen. Here are four of the low key licensing nuances that you need to know. 1. Unknown Editions A common challenge we see with SQL License editions shows up when it's time for an audit. As you begin to take inventory, it will become clear that most SAM tools don't register the proper editions in their program. To make that worse, if it did come back with the correct amount of editions, an auditor will assume that each one is Enterprise Edition, the cream of the crop edition, which could cost you a fortune if not proven otherwise. That's why it's essential to get your data to a trustworthy level and to know what's running where in your SQL server environment. 2. Underused Developer Edition Opportunities SQL Server Developer Edition lets developers build any kind of application on top of SQL Server for free. Unfortunately, we see that this type of licensing is underutilized all too often and in lieu of the Developer Edition licenses, enterprise sized clients buy Enterprise Edition SQL Server licenses for development environments just because they are told to by the vendor. As a wise man once told me, it's like buying a Ferrari to go to the grocery store as opposed to hopping in the old Ford Fiesta. The outcome is the same either way from a financial standpoint just by performing a quick self assessment on what environments are used as testing and which are used for production can be the difference in hundreds of thousands of dollars for your organization saved. Number three Old Edition Renewal traps. This one applies to those older SQL servers back when core based licensing wasn't a thing and it was called processor based licensing. The core licensing conversions From SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2012 can be incorrectly assessed and usually are. An auditor might assume four cores per licensed processor, but the actual core counts may have been less however, due to the fact that they assumed four cores. When it comes to license renewal, this will result in extra true UP expenses unless proven otherwise. Now what do I say unless proven otherwise? Well, to find out, I want you to check out this audit series right here where we teach you the ins and out of a software audit, what you can expect, and how to get a leg up on the auditors themselves if this so happens to you. In this playlist, we also do mention how you can get ahead of the auditors themselves and protect your IT budget from those vendors and their sticky fingers. SQL Server VM Sprawl all too often we see companies over purchase and underuse their SQL hardware and licenses that they need to run their business operations. What typically happens is that companies weary to harsh compliance penalties will buy a license to cover every instance and whisper of SQL in their virtual environment when Alternatively, there are a myriad of ways to consolidate licensing. For example, an organization could install one license on a host server hosting a multitude of VMs instead of licensing each single VM. This is just one simple trick of the many in the SQL licensing world. However, if you want to maximize the value out of your SQL licensing compliantly, you will need to talk to an industry expert. Luckily we have several here and if you have questions regarding your SQL infrastructure licenses or additions, feel free to reach out at this number here or send us a quick message on the email below. As you can see, licensing virtual machines on SQL can get extremely complicated. It can also be a stressful event too, especially if you don't know which VMs are on which cluster and which host is where in your IT environment. And when Mr. Microsoft comes knocking at the door in the form of a software audit now, that's when things can get real messy quick. But don't worry, we also have a cloud optimization and monitoring service that we can offer to help you balance your SQL servers right size your VMs, and ultimately save you money on licensing in your SQL environment. Not to mention the peace of mind too. So there you have it, a few things you may not have known around SQL Server editions and some of the tricky licensing nuances that come attached to them. They may be one of the most complex licensing models out there, but as long as you know that the facts, you can make a decision with confidence on which edition is right for your organization while keeping the costs down. Thanks for sticking around for this video. If you made it through this far, I'm proud of you and I'm also glad you watched the second installment of the SQL licensing series. Don't forget to smash that like button, hit subscribe and ring the bell if you want updates on when we post content. As always, keep your SQL servers safe, keep them licensed and I'll see you next time.