SQL 2012 allow only 20 cores

Hi there!

After long time I am back with some news. I was pretty busy this summer so that's the reason why I didn't posted my regular blog post for a while. But I hope this will change in next few months and you will get plenty of news.

I have been worked on some interesting clients and also I created some new courses aiming on advanced admin work such a deploying & managing SQL Server Replication, SQL Server Tuning & monitoring courses and managing & tuning SQL Server Mirroring. All those courses will be available for you next few weeks so keep eye on Woodler news. 

I have created new testing environment and with the help of one of my clients it will get alive on relatively new clustered machines. So I am looking forward to make some interesting test on this solution. 

Anyway this post should focus on some different distressing news about SQL 2012.  If you have current software assurance (SA) for SQL Server 2008 R2, this allows you to slide into SQL Server 2012 while maintaining CAL licensing (by the way this is not possible with new SQL Server 2012 licenses). You can find more on licensing here. 

Point is that when you install SQL 2012 from SA you will see only firs 20 cores in your SQL server so you will not be able to employ any others even if they are available on your machine. 

This is very well described by Aaron Bertrand on his blog. 

It seems that new license agreement has some limitations employed on cores available in SQL Instance.

But maybe there will be a solution. In one of the comments at the bottom on Aaron's blog post is described that :

If you had SA on your Server + Cal model before April 1st, 2012 then you can ask Microsoft for Amendment ID M145.  

Here is the part of the Amendment that you want: 
"Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the Product Use Rights, if SQL Server 2012 Enterprise is run in a physical Operating System Environment (OSE) on the licensed server, that physical OSE may access any number of physical cores."

I think this is important message and should be shared anywhere to keep clients informed about this radical change.

By the way, did you know that Microsoft changed core factor table for AMD processors from 1:1 to 1:0.75? It means that AMD CPUs will be cheaper. But it still be far more costly than Intel CPUs which employ HT which allow have more logical cores than physical (on which SQL Server is licensed). You can find more here.