Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database developed by Microsoft. It is offered in several commercial and non-commercial editions such as SQL Server Enterprise, Standard, Express and Developer.
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A Brief Overview of this product is provided below:
In terms of licensing models, two main licensing models are supported by Microsoft namely per core and Server + CAL model. A Brief overview of these licensing models are provided below:
Figure 1 Licensing Models
Enterprises rely on MS SQL Server for supporting critical customer applications and information. They typically experience significant growth in their SQL Server licensing consumptions as they continue to expand the number of hosted applications and experiences for their end users.
The SQL Server Databases can be deployed across the entire hybrid infrastructure on-premises and cloud, making license management difficult.
Challenges faced by SAM Managers
This blog, focuses on how ServiceNow SAM Pro, could help SAM Manager manage their license compliance of SQL Server deployed in heavily virtualised infrastructure (Cluster) on premise.
This blog is based on SQL Server licensing on virtual environment, in the comings blogs, we will discuss on other aspects of SQL Server Licensing.
Licensing SQL Server in heavily virtualised on-premises Cluster Environments
The major challenges that SAM Manager face here are:
- Difficulty to understand which Licensing model got applied: ServiceNow Software Asset Management (SAM), helps SAM Managers automatically reconcile per core or Server + CAL Licenses against deployments.
- Difficulty to understand the underlying Infrastructure for SQL Server deployments: ServiceNow SAM helps SAM Managers, understand the Cluster-> Host-> Virtual machine relationship. In addition, they can use CMDB dependency views to get an architectural view of the infrastructure on which SQL Server is deployed.
- Difficulty to determine which layer of licensing got applied: ServiceNow SAM automatically applies licensing to the virtual or physical layer *, based on which is cheaper. This can also be easily determined by the SAM Manager by leveraging out of box reporting.
- Difficulty to determine which resource consumed how many rights: ServiceNow SAM applies licenses to individual virtual/physical machines on the cluster.
- Difficultly to understand if Host affinity ** played a role while licensing SQL Server deployments: Host Affinity configuration plays a vital role in determining license consumption in a cluster. This can be easily reported by the SAM Manager on SAM Pro
*SQL Server Enterprise Edition allows option to License Individual Virtual Machine or Physical Server
**Virtualisation Technologies like VMware provide DRS (Domain Resource Scheduler) feature that allows organization to set Host Affinity Rules by which they can control on which hosts the Virtual machine can run. ServiceNow automatically discover the Host Affinity Rules and applies them accurately to provide correct license compliance position report to customers.
Use Case: SQL Server Licensing in an on-premises Cluster Environment
In this use case, we will explore how using the new Software Asset workspace, on ServiceNow SAM, the SAM Manager can understand and determine license compliance.
We can observe that there the customer has Software assurance configured and has a Cluster having 3 Hosts with SQL Server 2019 Enterprise installs on about 6 virtual machines. As per license consumption analysis, it will be cheaper to license at the physical layer. This is because of Microsoft Software Assurance benefits that provide benefits like unlimited virtualisation that allow unlimited number of virtual machines to live on the host, in case the host is completely licensed. More on Microsoft Software assurance here
Figure 2 Use Case shown in ServiceNow SAM Pro
Traversing the Software Asset Workspace
- SAM Manager opens the Software Asset Workspace and clicks on the License Usage view to observe the different cards for different publishers. More details on the SAM Workspace can be found here
Figure 3 License Usage View
2. The SAM manager can click on Microsoft Publisher Card and determine the various Products and their individual license compliance position. Notice that ServiceNow SAM shows the compliance status for each product.
Figure 4 License Workbench
3. The SAM manager can thereby expand SQL Server Product and get a list of all SQL Server version and editions in the organization
4. Notice the details tab, License metric results, Removal Candidates, Entitlements and Remediation options
- The Details section provides details on the Software model, true Up cost, over licenses amount and potential savings
- License metric results provides an overview of the License model used, the Licenses the organization owns, and the Licenses required for it be compliant. Notice that the Licenses required > Licensed owned, and hence Licenses available is in negative. That means that the organization is non-compliant by 2 rights
5. Also, notice the remediation options that are automatically created for helping the SAM manager be compliant. These remediation action trigger workflow for actions such as Purchasing rights, removing unlicensed installs etc.
Figure 5 Remediation Actions to trigger workflows
6. The SAM Manager would want to understand “how” the licenses were consumed; they can drill down on license required to understand the details of license consumption by selecting the total rights consumed.
Notice that the SAM Manager, can understand which resource(device) is part of a cluster, how many licenses are required by the device, the licensing status, as well as whether the device is a physical device or virtual.
For example, ESX3- SQL Server Cluster A is a physical device (as is virtual= false) and is a part of a cluster A and requires 4 licenses: also, it currently licensed. Additionally, notice that ServiceNow SAM has automatically determined that for SQL Server 2019 Enterprise it is cheaper to license the physical host layer rather than the virtual layer, this optimization is performed without any customer intervention. you can verify from the use case diagram above.
Notice that the Microsoft Software Assurance benefits like unlimited virtualization, license mobility are automatically applied by ServiceNow SAM Pro.
7. SAM manager can also click on the Installs tab to understand all SQL Server 2019 installs
Figure 6 SQL Server Installs
Additionally, they can click on “Installed on” to understand the Configuration Item on which the SQL Server is deployed. This provides more information on the CI details such as RAM, Storage, CPU Count, CPU Core count etc.
Figure 7 Configuration Item Details
8. Going further, the SAM Manager can click on License required to understand more details. This opens a screen on the right with more details on licensing model, Infrastructure dependency view, consumption details and more. This provides additional context to the SAM Manager
Figure 8 Additional Infrastructure and Licensing Details
The SAM manager can understand more details of the licensing model (in this case per core). In addition, they can open the CMDB dependency view to understand the underlying Infrastructure Architecture which has SQL Server deployed.
Figure 9 CMDB Dependency View
9. Going further to understand more details, the SAM Manager can click on License consumption details, to understand the details of the device i.e., Processor and cores and understand the reason why 4 licensable cores are applied to this device (Minimum of 4 core licenses for each processor on server (all physical cores must be licensed)
Figure 10 License consumption breakdown
In cases, where the virtual machine is allowed to move only to some hosts in the cluster due to host affinity rules, this can easily be understood by looking at the VM Hosts column, which details the hosts on which the VM can potentially move.
In addition, the SAM Manager can understand and get a sense of all installation by clicking on software installs licensing details, as well as any host affinity rules configured on this cluster.
Figure 11 Host Affinity Rules
ServiceNow SAM Pro provides the information of the infrastructure, license consumption, host affinity and other details in a very intuitive manner to help SAM Manager understand their license compliance position.
In the next blog we will discuss about SQL Server licensing on Cloud (BYOL (Bring Your Own License)), SQL Server component licensing and other details. Stay tuned!
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