Microsoft (SQL) server licensing

Question

We're planning a browser application (xbap) which is going to talk to WCF services. These WCF services get information from a SQL database. Each of our clients has his own database on this server. The clients need to get reports from SQL Reporting Services. A client can have multiple instances of this application running.

How does this work with licensing? We thought of starting off with 1 server which has MSSQL and IIS running on windows server (although I might be smart separating these from the start). So that would be 1 license for Server 2008 and 1 for SQL2008? With an addition for each user? Then, is every client a user or every employee of our clients? Is this the same for the reporting services or is this a part of SQL2008? I'm confused...

Additional: I've heard from this company that got billed for about $100.000 because they were using reporting services with the wrong license. Their web application was described as a normal application because they used reporting services. We're trying to prevent that.

Answer 1

With the full SQL Server 2008 products (Enterprise, Standard, Workgroup and Web Server), licensing you get a bunch of choices:

• There is a Webserver version that basically takes care of using SQL server within a web application.
• Client Access Licenses (CALs) basically are not interesting if you get more than 25 users.
• Per-CPU license is the most expensive but allows the most flexibility.

You need to be careful though: strictly speaking, for a web site, if you don't go with the special Web Server edition or a CPU license you must consider that each web client (web user out there) would need their own CAL.
If you just buy the cheapest 5 CAL version of SQL Server Standard (or Workgroup), you would not be compliant.

Compliance is not enforced by software on SQL Server: it's up to you to make sure you have enough licenss to cover your needs in case of control.

Depending on the functionalities you need, you'll have to get one of the available versions:

• Enterprise - all the bells and whistles, very costly, unlimited CPU/RAM.
• Standard - very complete. 4 CPU/ No RAM limitation. Much cheaper than Enterprise edition but still fairly pricey.
• Workgroup - limited to 2 CPU, no RAM limitation. A bit cheaper than Standard.
• Express - free but limited to 1GB RAM, 1 CPU and a 4GB database.

Not all functionalities are available for all versions, but usually, if your initial needs are modest to start with, just download the free Express Edition, then move up to suit your actual needs.

Sample prices and some licensing explanations are available on the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 website.

Answer 2

Per cpu licensing is probably your best best. But to answer your question, you can usually purchase "per device" or "per user" CALS for their software. This is just like it sounds. If you have one computer that will be accessing SQL Server with multiple users on that one comnputer, then "per device" CALS make sense. If however, generally you're going to have one user per computer, then it makes sense to purchase "per user" CALS.

A per CPU license for SQL Server Std isn't really that expensive. We paid roughly $3000 for that license.