SQL 2019 Licensing Guide

SQL Server 2019 offers customers a variety of licensing options aligned with how customers typically purchase specific workloads. There are two main licensing models that apply to SQL Server:

PER CORE

Gives customers a more precise measure of computing power and a more consistent licensing metric, regardless of whether solutions are deployed on physical servers on-premises, or in virtual or cloud environments.

• Core based licensing is appropriate when customers are unable to count users/devices, have Internet/Extranet workloads or systems that integrate with external facing workloads.
• To license a physical server—when running SQL Server in a physical OSE—all physical cores on the server must be licensed.
• A minimum of four core licenses are required for each physical processor on the server.

SERVER & CLIENT ACCESS LICENCE

Provides the option to license users and/or devices, with low cost access to incremental SQL Server deployments.

• Each server running SQL Server software requires a server license.
• Each user and/or device accessing a licensed SQL Server requires a SQL Server CAL that is the same version or newer – for example, to access a SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition server, a user would need a SQL Server 2012 or 2019 CAL.
• Each SQL Server CAL allows access to multiple licensed SQL Servers, including Standard Edition and legacy Business Intelligence and Enterprise Edition Servers.
• Each user and/or device that is accessing the SQL server either directly or indirectly requires a SQL Server CAL

For further information on all scenarios for licensing for SQL server 2019, click here.