Wow, SQL is expensive!

[HCHTech]

Quoting adding SQL 2019 Standard for a client's server as the LOB database is growing beyond the SQL Express limitations.

Per-core licensing is WAY too expensive - ~$28K without Software Assurance! It looks like the breakeven point for per-core is ~135 users - so I'll never see that in my client base.

Per-user (35 employees) works out to $899 + $209/user = $8,200.

I smell a meeting in my future - I already told the controller to 'buckle up' - haha.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yup..'taint cheap! Often the LOB app includes the SQL license with theirs. Or...as you probably have, gotta BYOSQL for the LOB app.
And then the horsepower to run it well..ain't cheap either. Recently did a Lenovo server for an accounting firm...SQL powering several of their Thomson Reuters apps....dual CPU, 10x cores each, RAID 10 on SSD....oh yeah!

 

[Sky-Knight]

ROFL yeah, MSSQL is the largest sticker shock of any MS product bar none.

If the product is going on a server they own, you need 4 cores per physical CPU minimum. And that's $1,559 / year for a 2 core pack.

Otherwise yeah, it's $898 for Standard Perpetual + CALs at $209 ea.

Every one of these I've done starts at about $10,000. Meanwhile the client in question usually is whining about the server itself costing $6000.

Or you can purchase a 2 core Azure MSSQL instance for an 80gb database and basic backups for $700 a month. That's with a 1 year reserved instance. Hybrid benefit drops it to $549.43 a month, but that doesn't make a ton of sense when that requires you to pay the per core pack of $1559 every year to get. Add some more cores to that though and things flip FAST.

But no matter what you do, you're out $10-$20 grand to maintain MSSQL over a 3 year lifecycle. Five is a stretch... you must stay CURRENT or bad things happen.

 

[putz]

Quoting adding SQL 2019 Standard for a client's server as the LOB database is growing beyond the SQL Express limitations.

Per-core licensing is WAY too expensive - ~$28K without Software Assurance! It looks like the breakeven point for per-core is ~135 users - so I'll never see that in my client base.

Per-user (35 employees) works out to $899 + $209/user = $8,200.

I smell a meeting in my future - I already told the controller to 'buckle up' - haha.

Yup its spendy. Also a larger reoccurring cost every time they need to upgrade. Not to mention project fees they pay you and/or the vendor to migrate when its time. If the vendor application that requires SQL has a web-based or cloud counterpart - definitely look into that. Will make you and your clients life easier.

 

[HCHTech]

If the vendor application that requires SQL has a web-based or cloud counterpart - definitely look into that. Will make you and your clients life easier.

No such luck. This is a small-market application for doing retirement plan calculations and a 2nd app from the same company to complete annual government filings. They were the last vendor I worked with to move from DOS to Windows back in the day, I don't expect them to move to the cloud anytime soon. There were still on Access up until recently - the move to SQL Express ran WAY better. Now that we're moving to SQL standard we can throw a lot more RAM & cores at it - that should make it run a lot faster.

 

[Sky-Knight]

No such luck. This is a small-market application for doing retirement plan calculations and a 2nd app from the same company to complete annual government filings. They were the last vendor I worked with to move from DOS to Windows back in the day, I don't expect them to move to the cloud anytime soon. There were still on Access up until recently - the move to SQL Express ran WAY better. Now that we're moving to SQL standard we can throw a lot more RAM & cores at it - that should make it run a lot faster.

Yeah, but if you're running MSSQL there's almost no reason not to lift and shift that mess into Azure, then the "server" is only powered up during business ours, and can upgrade or downgrade with a reboot.

Setup correctly you can get years of time out of Azure for just the leasing of the server hardware itself. The software costs what it costs, but the hardware is an expense no one needs. Depends on how they're accessing the app though.