14,499 questions
With one license you can install up to 50 named instances on one server.
Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition: Core-based Licensing (64-bit)
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Mohammed A. Tabrez
20
Reputation points
we have Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition: Core-based Licensing (64-bit) , so my question is, if i have one server and 10 instances, what will be cost?
SQL Server | Other
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Olaf Helper 47,441 Reputation points2023-07-17T11:42:13.1933333+00:00 -
Erland Sommarskog 121.8K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator2023-07-17T11:53:38.9933333+00:00 Actually, I don't think this limit is set by the license. 50 is simply the maximum number that is supported.
But the key point is correct: the license is per machine, not per instance.
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Mohammed A. Tabrez 20 Reputation points
2023-07-17T11:57:03.7633333+00:00 so if I reduce the servers from 10 to 2, the cost will be reduced immensely
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Erland Sommarskog 121.8K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2023-07-17T12:02:31.2466667+00:00 Yes, if you consolidate ten single-instance servers to two five-instance servers, you can save quite a bit in licensing cost. Then, if you have to beef up these servers with more cores etc to withstand the higher workload, you license cost may go up in that end, if you have core-based licensing.
And overall, since these five instances will compute for resources - particularly CPU and memory - there can be lot of complaints from users about poor performance, so this is nothing you do on a whim.
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Mohammed A. Tabrez 20 Reputation points
2023-07-17T12:08:36.3266667+00:00 i have 10 servers with 10 Instances(one instance each) with (total of 42 cores), but i am consolidating to 2 servers (64 cores) with 20 instances, will it impact the licensing cost, I am not worried about the performances, since these have less transactions
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