SQL CALs / Intranet

[HBelk]

Here's our SQL CAL scenario.

Our company has 1,000 users, but our intranet site is setup to only allow 100 concurrent connections. If there is an ASP page displaying information from SQL Server on that intranet, how many SQL CALs do we need to purchase to be legal?

A)100 CALs, since only a max of 100 can enter the site to possibly run the ASP
or
B)1,000 CALs, one for every client who could possibly run the ASP page

Thanks in advance.

HBelk

 

[theoxyde]

I believe the SQL Server licensing agreement says you must have one for each device that will connect either directly or indirectly. In your case, that would be 1000.

At that number, I would seriously look at per-processor licensing.

 

[mrdenny]

There are now 3 ways to license SQL Server.

Per processor, device cals, user cals.

Per processor - purchase 1 license for each processor in the server
device cals - purchase 1 license for each device that will access the data either directly or indirectly.
user cals - purchase 1 license for each user that will access the data either directly or indirectly.

You can read move here.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.asp

If your users share computers, then purchase device cals. If not user cals or device cals appear to cost the same. With 1000 users per processor will probally be the cheapest. For 1000 users the list price on the list above comes to $146,000. For a quad chip server your cost for standard edition is $20,000. Even enterprise edition on a quad chip will be less than device of users cals. Enterprise Edition comes to $80,000 for 4 processors.

Denny

 

[HBelk]

Thanks guys. I appreciate the information.

 

[theoxyde]

Oh yeah... I forgot about the device CALs. Thanks, mrdenny.

 

[mrdenny]

no problem.

Denny