Licensing with the Azure Hybrid Benefit

SQL Server Standard and Enterprise Core licenses with Software Assurance acquired through a Volume Licensing agreement or as a Software Subscription through CSP are sold in 2-packs. The rules for licensing virtual machines on-premises or in Azure are the same: you count the virtual cores assigned to the virtual machine and assign that number of licenses to the virtual machine, making sure that you meet a minimum of 4 licenses.

However, there are some extra rules when you use the licenses in Azure which give an additional level of deployment flexibility: you can choose to use Enterprise edition licenses to license a virtual machine running SQL Server Standard, or Standard edition licenses to license a virtual machine running SQL Server Enterprise. Let’s take a look at the rules.

If you’re running SQL Server Standard in a virtual machine and you assign SQL Server Standard Core licenses to it, then each license covers a single virtual core. Thus, an 8-core virtual machine will need 8 SQL Server Standard Core licenses. However, if you use SQL Server Enterprise Core licenses, then each license covers 4 virtual cores. So, the 8-core virtual machine running SQL Server Standard needs just 2 SQL Server Enterprise licenses assigned to it.

Similarly, if you’re running SQL Server Enterprise in a virtual machine and you assign SQL Server Enterprise Core licenses to it, then each license covers a single virtual core. Thus, an 8-core virtual machine will need 8 SQL Server Enterprise Core licenses. However, if you use SQL Server Standard Core licenses, then 4 licenses are required to cover each virtual core. So, the 8-core virtual machine running SQL Server Enterprise needs 32 SQL Server Standard licenses assigned to it.

You’ll find this detailed in a useful table in the Product Terms on this page.