Complicated licensing question

Hi,

I have a dual CPU Dell PowerEdge for my SQL server. I have a SQL 2005 license for 1 CPU. In addition to that, I have a SQL 2005 license that I obtained at the SQL Launch event for free.

Here are my questions:

If I just install SQL 2005 on my dual CPU server, will it not run at all, or will it just utilize one of the CPUs? Is this against the licensing agreement? I don't expect performance issues even if the SQL software only utilizes one of the processors, so that would work fine for us. However, if this is not a workable solution and I need two licenses, can I use the SQL Launch license as the second license? I can't figure out if it is a per-CPU or per-user license.

Thank you,

Pavla

If you have more than one CPU on the Servers you will have to disable them at BIOS Level to make them not accessible to SQL Server. The icences of the launch event were AFAIK Server licences with One CAL. So this would not bring you any further. If you want to use the other processor you will have to buy another proc license.

HTH, Jens K. Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de