Hi all, please help me.
We are implementing Always on high availability and using two servers, primary replica and secondary replica. Do we need 1 license or two licenses? We want to buy one license, if it will work, please let me know if possible or do we have to have 2?
Thanks in advance.
Jannat.
From the Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Licensing Guide (https://download.microsoft.com/download/9/C/6/9C6EB70A-8D52-48F4-9F04-08970411B7A3/SQL_Server_2016_Licensing_Guide_EN_US.pdf)
For each server licensed with SQL Server 2016 and covered by active Software Assurance, customers can run up to the same number of passive failover instances in a separate OSE to support failover events. A passive SQL Server instance is one that is not serving SQL Server data to clients or running active SQL Server workloads. The passive failover instances can run on a separate server. These may be used only to synchronize with the primary server and otherwise maintain the passive database instance in a warm standby state in order to minimize downtime due to hardware or software failure.
- The secondary server used for failover support does not need to be separately licensed for SQL Server as long as it is truly passive and the primary SQL Server is covered with active Software Assurance. If it is serving data, such as reports to clients running active SQL Server workloads, or performing any “work”, such as additional backups being made from secondary servers, then it must be licensed for SQL Server.
I added the bolding.
Thanks a lot!