“In a nutshell, if you’ve got more than four physical cores in each processor, you’re going to pay more to deploy 2012 than you would have to deploy SQL Server 2008 R2 on the same system,” Miller said. Final figures will vary to some degree, given a user’s volume-licensing agreement terms, he added.
On a system with eight or more cores, SQL Server 2012 Enterprise now costs more (by just a few dollars) than the same system running SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter, Miller said. At every point a server running Enterprise edition of 2012 is licensed with 8 cores per processor, it now costs more than Datacenter did in the old per-processor model with 2008 R2. This could be why Microsoft eliminated the Datacenter SKU with the 2012 release, he said, since per-core helps Microsoft adjust the licensing to finally charge for systems with core-dense processors.
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