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SQL Server Availability Group licencing

David 1 Reputation point
2020-11-30T21:48:54.39+00:00

Within an Availability Group, am I allowed to run jobs on a secondary node that collects Auditing and Maintenance data for that secondary server.

Can the Auditing and maintenance data be collected in a database (not in a system DB) on that secondary server that is not in the AG?

SQL Server
SQL Server
A family of Microsoft relational database management and analysis systems for e-commerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions.
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  1. Cris Zhan-MSFT 6,616 Reputation points
    2020-12-01T02:42:56.5+00:00

    Hello @David ,

    Based on the title of your question, are you asking about an unlicensed free passive replica?

    This is technical forum and we generally ask user to speak to licensing expert for such issues.
    you can consult professionals in this area calling 1-800-426-9400, Monday through Friday, 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. (Pacific Time). For international customers, please use the https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/worldwide to find contact information in your locations. For Volume Licensing Service Support, please use the https://www.microsoft.com/Licensing/servicecenter/default.aspx to contact information for your country.

    See also eBook "SQL Server 2019 Licensing Guide"

    A customer with SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance has historically benefited from a free passive instance of SQL Server for their high availability configurations. In addition to the high availability and disaster recovery benefits, the following operations are allowed on the passive replicas: Database consistency checks, Log backups, Full backups, Monitoring resource usage data.
    https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2019/10/30/new-high-availability-and-disaster-recovery-benefits-for-sql-server/

    Best Regards,
    Cris

  2. Shashank Singh 6,251 Reputation points
    2020-12-01T06:54:51.407+00:00

    Within an Availability Group, am I allowed to run jobs on a secondary node that collects Auditing and Maintenance data for that secondary server.

    So if you have AG with readable secondary replica which means you have paid for the licensing of the cores, you can very well run job on secondary replica.

    If you have AG with non readable secondary replica and its is non readable then you cannot run jobs on secondary replica. If you do so you are violating the license.

    Complete licensing details are mentioned in new-high-availability-and-disaster-recovery-benefits-for-sql-server.

    Can the Auditing and maintenance data be collected in a database (not in a system DB) on that secondary server that is not in the AG?

    Yes you can, but then again you would have to license this instance.

    If you have purchased licensing with Software Assurance(SA) for AG then you are allowed to run two passive instance with same number of cores without paying for the license. On secondary replica instance you can run following

    Database consistency checks
    Log backups
    Full backups
    Monitoring resource usage data

    Other than running this you would have to license secondary.