New SQL Server 2022 rules - good or bad?
SAMexpert - Microsoft Licensing and FinOps
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Happy New Year, 2023! We hope you had lovely holidays and looking forward to a better year than the tumultuous 2022.
This is our first update since October 2022. Since we are only interested in providing advice around the critical subjects, here's our summary of what happened since:
Here's what we included in our digest today:
Microsoft SQL Server 2022
Microsoft added the new version to Product Terms in December 2022.
This version introduced the following critical changes:
Critical, may affect your budgets negatively:
Potentially positive, helping reduce costs:
We conducted a?live Q&A session in December, where we detailed all the updates.?
It is essential to mention that the changes are not retrospective and do not affect licenses for previous SQL Server versions.
Some bits that you may easily overlook and that frustrate experienced license managers and licensing experts:
As for the Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server instances, we will update you when we clearly understand the cons and pros of the new pay-as-you-go economics.
Thoughts on the SQL Server economics
The Software Assurance requirement for per-VM licensing may hit small businesses and large retail networks that use mini-datacentres in stores and remote locations with minimal virtualisation.
If previously they could save on using single-host deployments with SQL Server virtual machines that did not require Software Assurance, now Software Assurance subscription cost will have to be considered. Of course, they also can "de-virtualise" SQL Server, but that would increase the number of core licenses required from 4 minimum cores per VM to somewhere around 16 core licences for an average "branch-grade" server. Not nice.
The only other alternative they have is to remain on SQL 2019 for a few more years.
Azure SQL Fail-over
It's definitely a positive change. Azure pay-as-you-go managed instances and virtual machines with SQL Server were finally granted the rights for free-of-charge fail-over instances for High Availability and Disaster Recovery, thus reducing licensing costs in Azure.?
You can read more about it in our article?SQL Server Cost Optimisation: Proven Tips.
A little more on SQL Server containers
SQL Server 2022 and later
The terms depend on whether your licences have Software Assurance or subscription.
If you have Software Assurance or the licences are subscription licenses:
If you do NOT have Software Assurance or subscription (perpetual license only):
Versions before SQL Server 2022
For SQL Server licensing, each container equals an operating system environment. Therefore, when you count licenses for SQL Server, treat each container as a virtual machine regardless of if it is "Hyper-V isolated" or not.
It affects the following:
You can read more about?container licensing in our updated article.
Introducing SAMexpert.Academy
In December, we finally branched out our training arm. The new training and certification website is hosted on the?SAMexpert.Academy?domain.
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What you can find there now:
Updates on our YouTube channel
We are back to regular live Q&A streams, which take place every Wednesday at 3 PM London Time.?
Here is what you may have missed but can watch recorded:
Upcoming live Q&A streams on SAMexpert TV
New guide: What Microsoft Licensing Agreement to choose in 2023?
If you work in IT procurement or are responsible for digital transformation strategy, choosing the correct licensing agreements is probably one of your top priorities. And if it isn't, it should become one.
Why? Most current Microsoft licensing agreements require one- or three-year commitments, whether through the contractual term or the pricing and subscription rules.?
Microsoft CSP is still pitched as the most flexible agreement, but since March 2022, monthly subscription plans have been made 20% more expensive than the annual options. Can your budget still afford that without reviewing the licensing strategy?
Choosing a "less ideal" agreement may lock you with unfavourable terms for the duration of the subscription and affect your bottom line.
Chapter shortcuts:
New guide: SQL Server Cost Optimisation: Proven Tips
Are you looking to optimise the costs of your on-premises and cloud-based SQL Server without compromising on your business needs and the benefits of one of the most popular database servers?
If so, you're not alone. Many organisations struggle with the costs associated with licensing and maintaining their SQL Server environments. For many, especially in finance, production and retail, SQL Server is a significant portion of their overall?Microsoft Enterprise Agreement?and?Microsoft Azure expenses.
Let's explore several cost optimisation tips for SQL Server licensing and maintenance costs, both on-premises and in the cloud. We have been successfully applying these cost-optimisation approaches ourselves for over 15 years.
Most of these will work for you whether you are a small business or a Fortune 500 company.
Chapter shortcuts:
New guide: Six things you can do today to optimise costs in Azure
With inflation rising and recession becoming more likely, the hunt for bottom-line savings is on. We have a true gem for you today: reducing your public cloud spending.
We will show you how to make a small investment and make it count within 30 days or less.
Chapter shortcuts:
New guide: Azure Savings Plans vs Reserved Instances
Microsoft added Savings Plans for compute, an offering that AWS pioneered in 2019. Savings Plans are a novel way within Azure to reduce the rates you pay for various compute-based services. They will augment and, in our opinion, eventually replace many of the Reserved Instances we have been using in the past years.
In the following thousand+ words, we will help you understand what the new Savings Plans bring, how you can benefit from them and where you need to be on the lookout to prevent bad awakenings.
Chapter shortcuts:
Significantly updated: Microsoft Unified Support Guide
Updated due to SQL Server changes: Licensing Microsoft Servers in Containers
And that concludes our January newsletter. Please let us know if you have any suggestions, questions, or business enquiries. You can also follow our social channels – we'd appreciate that. Thank you!