Registering the SQL server license

The SQL server supports three license registration modes: Per Processor, Server/Client Access License (CAL), and Per User. The Per Processor is used for registering the SQL Server 2008 R2 Developer and Parallel Data Warehouse. The following information describes the registration modes of Per Processor and Server/CAL.

• Per Processor licensing—The number of Per Processor licenses is counted by the number of processors on a SQL server. You must buy a Per Processor license for each processor on a server installed with the SQL server component. The Per Processor registration mode is irrelevant to the number of SQL servers and IMC servers, and is applicable to the networks containing a lot of SQL servers and IMC servers. See Figure 27 for an example.

  Figure 27: Per Processor Licensing

  

	NOTE: The number of the Per Processor licenses is irrelevant to the number of kernels in a processor.

• Server/CAL licensing—The number of Server/CAL licenses is counted by the number of SQL servers and IMC servers. You must buy a server license for each SQL server and a CAL license for each IMC server. The Server/CAL registration mode is applicable to the networks containing a few SQL servers and IMC servers. See Figure 28 for an example of CAL licensing.

Before you choose a registration mode, determine the IMC deployment environment:

• When IMC is deployed in centralized mode, buy a CAL license for only the IMC server.

• When IMC is deployed in distributed mode, buy a CAL license for each IMC server to access the SQL server.

	NOTE: The application of the license registration modes is for SQL Server 2005/2008/2008 R2 of standard and enterprise editions. You do not need to buy a license for the SQL Server Express edition. For more information about SQL server license registration, see official Microsoft documents.