Microsoft SQL Server Licensing Explanation
Versions
StandardSQL Server Standard provides core data management and business intelligence capabilities for non-critical workloads with minimal IT resources. |
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EnterpriseSQL Server Enterprise delivers comprehensive datacenter capabilities for mission-critical database, business intelligence, and advanced analytics workloads. |
License type:
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StandardThe most affordable way to get sql, this option is great for small (1 – 30) users or devices.Requirements:
Open License
Open License with Software Assurance
Software Assurance only |
Standard 2 CoreMicrosoft SQL 2 Core license comes with unlimited users and can be enhanced by speeding up storage and memory. Cost effective when you have more than 31 users on a system.Requirements:
Open License
Open License with Software Assurance
Software Assurance only |
Enterprise 2 CoreMicrosoft SQL Enterprise 2 Core license comes with unlimited users and can be enhanced by speeding up storage and memory.Requirements:
Open License
Open License with Software Assurance
Software Assurance only |
Device Client Access License
(1 Device CAL)
Your price: $274.99 Purchase
User Client Access License
(1 User CAL)
Your price: $274.99 Purchase
- Big Data Clusters – Deploy scalable clusters of SQL Server, Spark, and HDFS containers running on Kubernetes
- Data virtualization with PolyBase – Query data from external SQL Server, Oracle, Teradata, MongoDB, and ODBC data sources with external tables, now with UTF-8 encoding support
- Intelligent Database - Intelligent Query Processing improves performance and scalability of all your database workloads without any changes to your application or database design
- Support for persistent memory (PMEM) devices
- In-Memory Database technologies that leverage modern hardware innovation to deliver unparalleled performance and scale
- Monitoring improvements unlock performance insights over any database workload, just when you need them
- Enhancements to graph and spatial data types, UTF-8 support, and a new extensibility framework that allows developers to use the language of their choice to gain insights across all their data
- Unicode support - Support businesses across different countries and regions
- New Java language SDK - Simplifies the development of Java programs that can be run from SQL Server
- Language Extensions - Execute external code with the extensibility framework
- Expands upon Always Encrypted with in-place encryption and rich computations by enabling computations on plaintext data inside a server-side secure enclave
- Vulnerability assessment to track compliance of SQL Server instances and Azure SQL Database instances with recognized security best practices
Standard | Enterprise | |
Mission critical performance |
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Mission critical performance |
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Security |
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Security |
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Data warehousing |
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Data ware-housing |
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Business intelligence |
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Business intelligence |
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Advanced analytics |
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Advanced analytics |
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Hybrid cloud |
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Hybrid |
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Compare Versions
Features | Standard | Enterprise | |
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Mission critical performance | Maximum number of cores |
24 cores | Unlimited |
Maximum memory utilized per instance |
128 GB | OS Max | |
Maximum size |
524 PB | 524 PB | |
Basic OLTP |
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Manageability (Management Studio, Policy-Based Management) |
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Basic high availability (2-node single database failover, non-readable secondary) |
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Enterprise data management (Master Data Services, Data Quality Services) |
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Advanced OLTP (In-memory OLTP, Operational analytics) |
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Advanced HA (Always On - multi-node, multi-db failover, readable secondaries) |
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Security | Basic security (Row-level security, data masking, basic auditing, separation of duties) |
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Advanced security (Transparent Data Encryption, Always Encrypted) |
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Data warehousing | Advanced data integration (Fuzzy grouping and look ups, change data capture) |
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Data warehousing (In-Memory ColumnStore, Partitioning) |
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Business intelligence | Programmability & developer tools (T-SQL, CLR, Data Types, FileTable, JSON) |
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Basic reporting & analytics |
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Basic data integration (SSIS, built-in connectors) |
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Basic Corporate Business Intelligence (Multi-dimensional models, Basic tabular model) |
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Mobile BI (Datazen) |
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Advanced Corporate Business Intelligence (Advanced tabular model, Direct query,
in-memory analytics, advanced data mining)
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Advanced analytics | Basic “R” integration (Connectivity to R Open, Limited parallelism for RRE)
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Advanced “R” integration (Full parallelism for RRE)
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Hybrid cloud | Stretch Database |
Compare Years
Features | 2019 | 2017 | 2016 | 2014 | |
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Intelligence across all your data | Big Data Clusters | ||||
Data virtualization using PolyBase | |||||
Database performance | In-memory OLTP* | ||||
In-Memory Database: Persistent Memory | |||||
In-memory database: memory-optimized tempdb | |||||
Real-time operational analytics | |||||
Intelligent query processing | |||||
Intelligent performance | |||||
Availability | Always On* | ||||
Accelerated database recovery | |||||
Read scale-out availability groups | |||||
Security | Always Encrypted* | ||||
Always encrypted with secure enclaves | |||||
Data discovery and classification | |||||
Transparent data encryption* | |||||
Encryption at rest and in motion | |||||
Dynamic data masking and row-level security | |||||
Backup encryption support | |||||
Cloud-ready | Free asynchronous replication on Azure Virtual Machines for disaster recovery | ||||
Backup to Azure | |||||
Disaster recovery to Azure* | |||||
Optimized virtual machine images in Azure gallery | |||||
Management & Programmability | Linux support | ||||
Container support | |||||
Kubernetes support | |||||
Temporal tables | |||||
JSON Support | |||||
Graph data support | |||||
UTF 8 support | |||||
Java support | |||||
Azure Data Studio to manage SQL Server including support for T-SQL using notebooks | |||||
Database compatibility certification | |||||
Business intelligence and Analytics Support | Tabular BI semantic model* | ||||
Master data services* | |||||
Integration services managed as a server | |||||
Data quality services* | |||||
Many-to-many relationships in tabular models | |||||
End-to-end mobile BI on any device | |||||
SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) direct query | |||||
Calculation groups in tabular model |
Benefits of Software Assurance
Per Core Explanation
SQL Server Core Factor Table* | |
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Processor Type | Core Factor |
All processors not mentioned below | 1 |
AMD Processors 31XX, 32XX, 33XX, 41XX, 42XX, 43XX, 61XX, 62XX, 63XX Series Processors with 6 or more cores | 0.75 |
Single-Core Processors | 4 |
Dual-Core Processors | 2 |
SQL Server 2019 technical white paper (PDF)
SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters technical white paper (PDF)
SQL Server 2016 Datasheet (PDF)
SQL Server 2016 Mission Critical technical white paper (PDF)
SQL Server 2016 In-memory OLTP technical white paper (PDF)
SQL Server 2016 In-memory OLTP and Columnstore Feature Comparison (PDF)
SQL Server 2016 Deeper Insights Across Data technical white paper (PDF)
SQL Server 2016 Hyper-scale Cloud technical white paper (PDF)