SQL Server Licensing: High Availability and Disaster Recovery benefits

TrevorKohlman & SaraGonc The testing refers to any DR drills that you would perform periodically to determine that your DR plan is valid and it will work in case of a true disaster. Please talk to your Account Executive or Licensing Specialist to determine if your specific DR test scenario qualifies for the benefit if you want to validate specifically for your environments. All the SQL Server HADR common options are listed https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/virtual-machines/windows/business-continuity-high-availability-disaster-recovery-hadr-overview for Azure Virtual Machine.

From our https://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/Downloader.aspx?documenttype=PT&lang=English:

Customer may also run Primary Workloads and its disaster recovery Fail-over OSEs simultaneously for brief periods of disaster recovery testing every 90 days, and around the time of a disaster, for a brief period, to assist in the transfer between them.

sybadm For the first part of your Q, please refer the above comment. When you switch between production and DR environments, you are leveraging your License Mobility Software Assurance benefit and reassigning licenses from production to DR. You can do this reassignment any number of times with Software Assurance. 

petervee For your example (Azure VM with SQL Server (EE/SA) with 16 cores for primary, and secondary with 16 cores (no readable secondary, active/passive).  Would the benefit cover this scenario (no on-prem)?  Or, would all 32 cores/vCpus need to be licensed?):

a. If you are running this setup on Azure VM or on-premises, you would not need to license the secondary replica as long as it has 16 cores or less and the replica satisfies the condition of a passive replica. 

b. The benefit that you would leverage would be the fail-over server Software Assurance benefit. If you add a third replica with 16 cores which is passive but is set for async data movement, then that would not need to be licensed under the new failover server DR benefit. 

c. If you are running on-premises, and set up a fourth async passive replica on Azure VM for 16 cores, then you wouldn't need to license the SQL licenses on the VM due to the Failover servers for disaster recovery in Azure benefit. 

HTH

Hi Amit, 

Thanks for this, and other blog posts, Amit Banerjee 

What would be the requirements for SQL Server (EE/SA) when using AlwaysOn Availability Groups with WSFC on Azure VM's, with no readable-secondaries.  

For example, Azure VM with SQL Server (EE/SA) with 16 cores for primary, and secondary with 16 cores (no readable secondary, active/passive).  Would the benefit cover this scenario (no on-prem)?  Or, would all 32 cores/vCpus need to be licensed?  

Thanks!

hey Amit, Nice examples. When you say Software Assurance allows you to run DR Test. Could you please clarify this topic in more details. Does Software Assurance allows to switch Production and DR roles between two sites or this just allows you to test DR and then failback to Production? If later is the case then Software Assurance has no real meaning or any benefits to the customers.

Hi Amit Banerjee, thanks for the excelent overview.

I have the same interest of TrevorKohlman too.

Thanks for your help.

Hi Amit Banerjee  thanks for the overview.  Do you know of any Guides and Walk though for working for SQL 2019 and the HA/DR and Azure DR setup.  I am trying better to understand this and the setup for this in what is all involved.  As we have many clients that would be interested in this.  My setup would be VM on Prem with Primary, Secondary and Secondary DR.  As well as VM on Prem with Primary , Secondary and Azure Sencondary DR. I want to understand the Testing that you talked about and what we can and can not do under the Software assurance.