Reply by Allen Shubin from HostUs on Thursday, 4 September, 2014 - 13:19

Hi Mayank, The way that the MS SQL licencing works is that it can not be on a physical server with other types of MS licencing such as those that a hosting company would usually offer. Hosting or Cloud servers typically have many virtual servers running on larger physical servers. If there is a physical partition or blade all is fine and you can use the donation licencing. If however, the partition is virtual then it would not meet standards. Hope this helped. Please feel free to contact me if want to discuss further options.

Reply by Jürgen Mertin from Parish IT on Thursday, 4 September, 2014 - 14:29

Hello Mayank. If you are talking about an external hosting provider, it will actually depend on what type of licensing the provider is using. Under Microsoft SPLA Licensing (the licensing agreement that hosting providers use), there is an option called Mobility Licensing, where you (the client) buy the license, then sign it over to the host to use. Your host must be a SPLA subscriber, and they must have the Mobility option active in their agreement. Just like previous versions of SQL, if you are using the Per Core model, every core on the server must be licensed. The minimum number of cores that need to be licensed is 4 cores. Also like before if you are working in a virtualized environment you can choose to license at the virtual server level or at the host level depending on which approach is going to be more cost effective for you. If you choose to license at the per virtual server level then each licensed VM covered with Software Assurance can be moved frequently within a server farm, or to a third-party hoster or cloud services provider, without the need to purchase additional SQL Server licenses. If you choose to go down the per host licensing model, then just like previous versions you still need to license all of the cores on the host server. I suggest contacting either your hosting provider to discuss your options, or contact Connecting Up as they will put you in touch with the right people. Lastly, you could send me your requirements, and I can provide an answer from our reseller. Take care!

Reply by David Sia from Techware on Friday, 12 September, 2014 - 15:38

Mayank, it will work. We provide dedicated physical host so that it is compliant with Connecting Up. They are in a virtual environment and the hardware hosted is dedicated to you. These servers are hosted at our rack at Next DC. Regards, David | www.techware.com.au