Comments on: Per processor licenses for your application

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:38:47 +0000

For those of us with Microsoft SQL – They have recently clarified their Processsor based licensing. Licensing for SQL is based on the PHYSICAL processor / per VM. Within a VM, if the host has 4 cores per socket, then a single processor license would allow you to present 4 Virtual Processors to the VM. This was first clarified in answer to a question I posed to a Licensing person at MS – see http://ladylicensing.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!87F95F1B5B21B01E!1558.entry?ccr=136#comment . The official licensing page for SQL 2005 has also been updated to make this a bit more clear.

Hope that helps!

By: slatribat

slatribat — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:17:22 +0000

Andrews says:
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I just implemented it in ESX 3.5u2.
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Has anyone else done this on esx 3.5 ?

Regards
Anders

By: Pete

Pete — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:09:39 +0000

We have some XP machines we use to build/compile our software for that given platform, and have run into the 2 processor limitation already. Can anyone confirm that they have bumped this up to say 4 cores (2 sockets with 2 cores) or 8 cores (2 sockets with 4 cores) successfully? does this have an adverse affect on co-scheduling that is different from a VM/OS that is allowed to have 4 or 8 sockets?

By: sahaynes

sahaynes — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:57:06 +0000

Important note to this.

“The number of VCPUs must be divisible by cpuid.coresPerSocket. So if your VM was created with
8 VCPUs, coresPerSocket can only be 1,2,4, or 8.”

I didn’t quite get the process the first time so maybe this will help the next person to come along.

You first have to determine how many cores you need. If you need 8 cores then assign 8 VCPUs to your machine. Then if you set coresPerSocket to 4, ESX will assume you mean 2 Quad core processors. I first made the assumption that I would assign 1 vCPU and then set coresPerSocket to 2 to get 1 dual core CPU and it just doesn’t work that way.

By: John B

John B — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:07:10 +0000

This is fantastic for VDI deployments. Windows XP has a 2 socket limit, so normally that would be 2 virtual cpu’s. But if I buy a high power desktop I can install 2 quad core processors giving me 8 cpu’s. Now I can do this on a VM running XP too! Awesome.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:37:00 +0000

Aside from making it easier/cheaper to license per applications per socket, what other uses does this have?

By: Jason Litka

Jason Litka — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:37:15 +0000

Thank you! I migrated a SQL server to ESXi a while back and had to move from a single-socket, quad-core to a single vCPU because I couldn’t get the OS to detect a second vCPU as a second core and not a separate socket.

By: kiddkoala

kiddkoala — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:38:27 +0000

Apologies for my previous comment, I have reread and now fully understand – it will not undermine the licensing at all.

By: Duncan Epping

Duncan Epping — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:22:01 +0000

Experimental support only at the moment.

By: wjpatton

wjpatton — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:07:34 +0000

Duncan,
Have you received any confirmation of support on this? I have submitted it through our Rep as well and have not received any information.

Thank you.