SBS2008 Premium and SQL2008 Clustering

Hi all,
i'm trying to check (without having a SBS2008 installation) il SQL2008
included in SBS2008 Premium support SQL2008 clustering so I have full
redundancy SQL 2008 DB buying only two license of SBS2008 Premium.

Thanks
Mauro

 

Cris Hanna [SBS - MVP] ha scritto:

No, my basic question is if SBS2008 include the same SQL2008 Standard
like buying SQL2008 Standard separately... because if true i can save
many many $$$$$.

Thanks
Mauro

 

Cris Hanna [SBS - MVP] ha scritto:

It's not my case... i will have two SBS2008 with each a SQL Server 2008
for database mirroring. it's this license compliant?

Mauro

 

You need Windows Server 2008 Enterprise to be able to do clustering at
all, so the Premium features of SBS2008 are of no help to you.

Even if Windows Server 2008 Standard were to support clustering, you could
not do this with two SBS2008 licences (only one SBS server per domain is
permitted).

On top of the requirement for Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, SQL Server
2008 Standard only supports 2-way clustering. If you want to do more than
2-way clustering, you'll also need SQL Server 2008 Enterprise.

There is of course nothing preventing you from introducing a WS2008
Enterprise cluster into an SBS environment as a member server - you just
have to pony up the necessary cash (2+ physical servers, 2+ WS2008
Enterprise licences, 2+ SQL2008 Enterprise [or change all 2+ to 2 with
SQL2008 Standard] licences, bunch of SQL CALs).

 

Perhaps it is easier to understand from the licensing aspect not just the
technical bits.

The SQL in SBS2008 Premium has to be installed in a SBS2008 domain.
The license for all components of SBS (Windows Server, Exchange, SQL)
applies to the entire package as a whole; you can't install just a component
(such as SQL or Exchange) although you may exclude installing a component.
The SBS setup ensures that you are in compliance.

If you plan to install 1 SBS Premium, and only the SQL from the 2nd SBS,
that would violate the license of the 2nd SBS.
If you plan to install 2 SBS Premiums with SQL, you would not be able to
cluster them in the normal sense because the SQL would each have to be
in different SBS domains, probably in different networks.

If you plan to use some 3rd party method to implement 'clustering' so that
each SBS and SQL would not see each other, that might work - it depends
on what you mean by clustering and what you really want to achieve.

If you want to be able to recover quickly from a crash/outage, but with some
downtime (so it is not clustering), SoftwareAssurance provides you cold
standby rights so you don't have to buy the 2nd SBS license, and there are
solutions that can help you to minimise the downtime and data loss.

HTH,
Eugene Tan

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