“How does licensing work for SQL Server in a Virtual Machine environment?” Answer:Microsoft SQL Server Licensing Guide (63 Page PDF)

Rob’s TechNet Ragg… - SQL Server Licensing in Hyper-V Environment

“I received a question a few days ago about how to license SQL (per processor) within a Virtual Machine on a Hyper-V server (or other hypervisor based host).  There has been a lot of confusion on this, at least I’ve been confused, so I wanted to dig into this and see what I could find.  I found the SQL 2008 Licensing Guide.  It can be found on the SQL 2008 Licensing page here. 

The problem with SQL licensing when you look at the per processor licensing option is, “How do I license SQL in a virtual environment?  Do I have to license every processor on the Hyper-V server?”  So I’m going to point out a few pages of this SQL licensing document that will help you understand how to work this out.

The SQL 2008 Licensing Guide can be downloaded from the page above, or it can be downloaded from here.  This document does a great job of working through the licensing scenarios.  Chapter 4 is where it actually gets interesting with respect to virtualization, but you need to read Chapter 3 first to understand the licensing models.  I’m going to focus on the per processor licensing, that is the one that is less obvious in a virtual environment.  Page 25 is where we get started, let’s first take a look at the introductory explanation. 

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Virtualization is starting to take off in my day life and virtual SQL Servers are a popular topic. The question has come up as to how the licensing works. This guide seems to be tailor made for me. :)

Microsoft SQL Server Licensing Guide (PDF)