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SQL Anywhere licensing in Hyper-V environment?

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We are upgrading from Sybase 9 to 16 (or 17). The new setup will be all Hyper-V (one live server and two backup servers replicating using VSS service). We are planning on having one DB server on one of the Hyper-V machines. Given this scenario, I have few questions:

  1. The virtual machines can be setup with 1 or more CPUs. If I have a VM with 2 CPUs, would 1 CPU SQL Anywhere license use only 1 CPU or will it refuse to work? It is not that I am trying to cheat but the DB server will have other services running that may need more processing power whether the actual DB engine is not going to get a lot of usage.

  2. In a three server scenario (one main, two backup) where only one server is active one at all times, do I need to buy three Workgroup edition licenses or one is enough?

  3. Is this correct that SQL Anywhere 17 changes the licensing from per CPU to per Core? If that's true, then this is something we have to consider since the licensing cost is going to be a lot higher.

I am posting here because neither SAP customer service or authorized sales rep was able to give me straight answer to my questions.

Thanks.

asked 13 Aug '15, 10:41

drabina's gravatar image

drabina
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4

Sorry you weren't able to get the answers you need.

Check out this blog post for details on licensing in virtual environments: http://scn.sap.com/community/sql-anywhere/blog/2014/12/02/licensing-sap-sql-anywhere-in-virtual-environments

To briefly address your questions:

  1. Yes, a single chip licensed database server would work fine on a multi-chip machine. The database server would only use a single chip.
  2. If you are setting up SQL Anywhere High Availability, you need to purchase SQL Anywhere Standard Edition, which entitles you to run a primary, mirror and arbiter server. If you are running the servers for another purpose, and they are not running on the same hardware then you would require 3 licenses of Workgroup/Standard/Advanced edition.
  3. Yes, version 17 has moved to per-core licensing.
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answered 13 Aug '15, 11:08

Jason%20Hinsperger's gravatar image

Jason Hinspe...
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Thank you for providing answers to my questions. I have read this blog post you have linked to. If we could license the host CPUs that would be great but how SQL Anywhere will be able to determine how many physical CPUs the host machine has if it only has access to vCPUs from the virtual machine it runs on?

Also, as to my question #2, there SQL Anywhere will not technically run on three different servers. The DB virtual machine will be replicating across the two backup servers so we have two backup copies of the VM. Configuration, specs, etc will all be the same. In this case, if I understand correctly, only 1 license would be required because the servers would never be on at the same time. They are just going to be exact copies of each other for use in case of failure. I guess this is different than what you have described because we are not going to use SQL Anywhere High Availability (VCS) but the Microsoft's VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) that is going to make a shadow copy of the whole VM not just the database only.

Any thoughts? I am just trying to make an informed decision and to be fully compatible with SQL Anywhere licensing.

(13 Aug '15, 11:47) drabina
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2

The server will treat a vCPU the same as a physical CPU. It just asks the OS how many CPUs are present. In either case, the license will only allow the server to use up to the licensed number of CPUs, even if there are more.

I believe your understanding is correct with regards to your question #2.

(13 Aug '15, 12:03) Jason Hinspe...

Thank you for replying. Your input was very valuable in clarifying the licensing options I was confused with.

(13 Aug '15, 14:40) drabina

@Jason: I'm currently facing a similar situation: We like to install SA in a VM that can be run on (and moved between) one of two nodes of a MS Cluster under Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V (i.e. the VM image will be stored on a Cluster Shared Volume). Given the fact that there's only VM running, it would mean that I only need one license (we are using seat-based licenses), not two, right?

(14 Aug '15, 02:22) Volker Barth
1

Yes, I believe that is correct Volker. This is basically an automated backup/recovery scenario.

(14 Aug '15, 14:50) Jason Hinspe...
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question asked: 13 Aug '15, 10:41

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last updated: 14 Aug '15, 14:50

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