Brent Ozar looks at an ugly aspect of Windows Server 2016 licensing:
Windows Server 2016 is now licensed by the core, but that’s not really the big problem. The bigger problem is buried in the licensing guide (PDF):
- “A minimum of 16 core licenses is required for each server.”
- “A minimum of 8 core licenses is required for each physical processor.”
When most sysadmins see that, they’ll think, “Okay, so I shouldn’t bother buying a server smaller than 2 8-core processors.”
There are plenty of scenarios in which this doesn’t hurt (much): mainly when you need a hefty server with more than 16 cores, or when you are running in a virtualized environment and can split that hardware across a number of logical servers.
As for me, this is one reason why I’m looking forward to SQL Server on Linux.