[eropple]

I quite like Postgres and use it preferentially, but your numbers are off. SQL Server Enterprise costs more like $7500/core; that $15K pack, as far as I am aware, comes with two core licenses. SQL Server Standard 2016 costs $931 for a license if you use CALs ($209 a pop), or $3700/core.

Also bear in mind that almost nobody pays list price for any of this.

[Keyframe]

$7500 per core, but only $15,000 for two cores sounds like a sweet deal though.

[grouseway]

There are no more server CPUs with less than 6 cores though.

We could happily manage with just 2 dedicated to SQL server, but you have to license all the cores you have. So 3K worth of low end hardware ends up costing you several multiples of that in licensing.

[eropple]

What features in SQL Server Enterprise do you need? More than 24 cores? More than 128GB of RAM?

I ask because SQL Server Standard is significantly cheaper when you're using CALs instead of unlimited connections. Ten servers fronting a SQL Server Standard install is $3K, which at a large enterprise is often within a director-level's discretionary equipment budget.

[adamzochowski]

User CAL is only cheap if you only deal with small amount of users (internal app). Please note a user is not SQL User account, but represents actual individual person. If you have a webserver (with one db user) but a thousand of visitors, then Microsoft treats it as thousand user CALs . Following MS doc explains this in detail http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/F/8/6F84A9FE-1E5C-4... , look for keyword 'multiplexing'

[eropple]

Huh, TIL. I literally had a Microsoft sales rep tell me otherwise. Anything to get the sale, I guess.

[dspillett]

> but you have to license all the cores you have

Is that the case? I'm sure I've seen people running on limited cores for licencing reasons rather than having to licence every core. Not sir if that was enforced by the engine refusing to use more, or via seeing processor affinities.

[AlphaSite]

I imagine a VM is a good solution to that.

[GordonS]

Windows also let's you set CPU affinity per process - could that be used as a simple workaround?

[h1d]

I laugh when people have to deal with these problems when others are solving real problems using free tools.

[h1d]

For someone who grew up with decent open source solutions in the software stack, that deal simply sounds insane and it should be the majority's thinking soon enough.

And if those paidwares don't solve your problems exclusively, I doubt people would choose to use it when they can solve their problems with the tools they grew up with.

[jtdev]

Having to spend time dealing with the MS licensing mess, rather than building software, seems wasteful and in my experience can be likened to sitting on a cactus for an extended period of time.

[eropple]

I agree. (My own stuff is pretty much all Postgres and the occasional MySQL.) But when you're in an organization where your needs might merit SQL Server, I'd hope you'd have somebody to deal with that for you. ;)