Licensing of SQL Server has always been a little
confusing. Prior to installing SQL Server 2008 in your environment, you need to
make sure you understand how the product is licensed. Nobody intentionally
wants to violate Microsoft’s licensing policies. However, sometimes it is just
too confusing to understand all the different licensing requirements for each
SQL Server installation flavor.
Today with the people from the Internet accessing your
servers, as well as your internal folks you need to make sure each individual
and type of individual is license correctly. There are three different types of
licenses: a device client access license, a client access license, and a
processor license. Something else to consider is whether you are also setting
up some kind of failover cluster. In some situations, depending on how you set up
your cluster, may or may not require additional licenses. Virtual machines now
days are extremely popular. If you are deploying SQL Server in a virtualized
environment there are more licensing options that you need to consider.
Since there are many different installation options for SQL
Server, you really need to make sure you understand how your particular SQL
Server setups need to be licensed. All the different license options are
discussed within this white paper. Make sure your next SQL Server 2008
deployment is licensed appropriately, by reading this white paper.