Licensing SQL 2012 in a VM with Hyper-threading

When I talk to customers about running SQL in a virtual machine I often refer to the SQL 2012 Licensing Guide to make sure I have the latest information.  This document has changed quite a few times over the last year and I often find something new that I didn’t notice in the prior version (or simply wasn’t there). Last…

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SQL 2012 AAG/FCI added to VMware “Supported Configurations” KB

Just a quick post to note that VMware has added SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups and AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances to their “Microsoft Clustering on VMware vSphere: Guidelines for Supported Configurations” knowledgebase article.  This is a KB article that I refer to frequently when speaking with customers about virtualizing business critical applications and clustered servers.  As expected, SQL 2012 AAGs…

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2012 – The Year of SQL Virtualization

Those of you who follow me on Twitter have probably seen me say this a few times – 2012 will be the year of SQL virtualization, specifically SQL on vSphere.  I figured it was about time to back that up with some facts and some opinions on just why I am so adamant about that statement. I spend a lot…

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Guest clustering on vSphere: A familiar topic revisited

Yes, it’s 2012 and we’re still talking about whether or not organizations should consider running a Microsoft Windows Failover Cluster (sometimes referred to as MSCS clustering) in a vSphere environment.  I know this topic has been written about before by others but I wanted to share some of my own thoughts and experiences around this topic.  My focus these days…

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New SQL 2012 Licensing and Its Impact On Virtualization

Last week Microsoft released their updated licensing scheme for SQL Server 2012, which is due to be released next year.  Though there are a number of changes to the product and to how it is licensed, in my mind the biggest change is that Microsoft has moved to a per core licensing model for SQL.  The Server + CAL model…

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