Purchasing ESUs

Overview

The price of a 1-year SQL Server 2014 ESU Core license is equivalent to the price of a regular SQL Server Core 2014 license without Software Assurance. When you look on a price list at the ESU SKU descriptions you see that they’re available in 2-core packs, or per server, and they’re labelled according to the year that they cover, so that you buy different licenses for different years of coverage.

In CSP, for example, the license for the first year is labelled “1st year EOS (Coverage July 10 2024 – July 8 2025)”. So, to cover servers for the first 12-month period after the end of support, you would purchase the “1st year” licenses, and to continue covering servers for the second 12-month period you would purchase the “2nd year” licenses (July 2025 – July 2026), and for the third year “3rd year” licenses (July 2026 – July 2027).

Billing

Note that if you had decided to live dangerously during the first 12-month period and didn’t purchase any Extended Security Updates licenses, you would need to purchase both the “Year 1” and “Year 2” licenses if you decided to protect your servers in the middle of the second 12-month period.

Billing is at the point of purchase in CSP, and neither CSP nor EA customers need to make a commitment for more than a year at a time. In addition, because the licenses are tied to the end-of-support date, there’s no alignment in the EA to the anniversary date or pro-rating in terms of pricing.