SQL Enterprise licening for Always On

Question

Hi,

In the following scenario, how many servers do you need to licence?

All nodes are SQL Server 2019 enterprise edition.

primary server A with a synchronous replica on server B
Asynchronous replica on server C in a different data centre

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi @zoe Ohara ,

When secondary replicas are actively used to support any additional workload scenarios —that is when the replicas used for failover purposes are no longer truly passive—they must be fully licensed accordingly.
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. Disaster Recovery replica is defined as a passive replica setup as asynchronous replica with manual failover. Please refer to SQL Server 2019 licensing guide which might help.
For detailed information about the license issue, please call 1-800-426-9400, Monday through Friday, 6:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. (Pacific Time) to speak directly to a Microsoft licensing specialist. 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://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/contact-us to contact information for your country.

Best Regards,
Amelia

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.