Microsoft Physical Core with SA

Available from 9.2.6. The Microsoft Physical Core with SA metric is used to determine the licensing cost of Microsoft products. It is based on the number of physical cores that are deployed on the host where the software is installed. When the software is installed on multiple hosts, all cores from all hosts contribute to metric utilization. Because this license type is based on physical cores, the same number of cores is assigned regardless of whether the software is installed on a physical host or on a virtual machine.

Depending on the processor type, Microsoft requires that an appropriate core factor is applied to calculate the number of required licenses. The number of cores that is reported by BigFix Inventory represents the actual number of physical cores without any core factor applied. The minimal number of licensable cores is four per physical processor. It means that each processor on a host with one or two cores is assigned four cores.

Supported software

Reporting of the metric is supported for Microsoft SQL Server 2012, 2014, and 2016 (Standard and Enterprise).

Requirements

To report the number of physical cores for the discovered Microsoft software, the licensed software must have Software Assurance.

Additionally, VM managers should be defined for all virtual machines in your environment. If a VM manager is not defined for a particular host, the number of cores on the host is counted as 0. As a result, license utilization might be underestimated. If a component of a product with the Microsoft Physical Core with SA metric is detected on a host for which a VM manager is not defined, a warning sign () is displayed on the All Metrics report. It indicates calculation inaccuracy.
Note: The warning is displayed only on the user interface. It is not displayed in the CSV or PDF version of the All Metrics report.

Limitations

When a computer on which the software was discovered is deleted, report columns related to server capacity show <no data> in the user interface. Information about computers that contributed to the metric peak value is available in the audit snapshot regardless of whether these computers were removed.

Examples

The following examples describe how the number of required licenses is calculated. They are based on sample data.

Example 1: Software is deployed on a physical server
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise is installed on a physical computer with four dual-core processors. According to the licensing terms, each dual-core processor is assigned four cores which gives 16 cores in total. Metric utilization for Microsoft SQL Server is 16.
Table 1. Metric utilization for software in a physical environment
Host 1
Physical processors on the host 4
Physical cores on the host 8
Core licenses needed 16
Example 2: Software is deployed on two virtual machines
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise is installed on two virtual machines that run on a host with 10-core processor. The cores are shared by the virtual machines. The number of virtual cores that are assigned to a virtual machine is ignored and BigFix Inventory reports the total number of physical cores on the host. Metric utilization for Microsoft SQL Server is 10.
Table 2. Metric utilization for software in a virtual environment
Virtual Machine 1 Virtual Machine 2
Virtual cores 8 16
Physical cores on the host 10 10
Physical processors on the host 1
Core licenses needed 10
Example 3: Software is deployed on two virtual machines that were migrated between hosts

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise is installed on two virtual machines that run on a host with 10-core processor. Both virtual machines are migrated on the same day to a host with a 12-core processor. Metric utilization is checked once per day at midnight (GMT). Taking advantage of License Mobility, all licenses from Host 1 are reassigned to Host 2. Metric utilization for Microsoft SQL Server is 10 for the period before the migration, and 12 starting from the day of the migration.

Example 4: Software instance uses a different license metric
Two instances of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise are discovered. The first instance uses the Microsoft Physical Core with SA metric. The second instance uses a different metric, for example Microsoft Virtual Core with SA. To ensure that only the first instance contributes to the calculation of the Microsoft Physical Core with SA metric, reassign the second instance to the proper metric. If the metric is not available in the software catalog, exclude the instance from pricing calculations. For more information, see: Assigning components to products, and Excluding and suppressing software instances.
Example 5: Two software instances use the same metric and are installed on the same server
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise are discovered on one server. Both instances use the Microsoft Physical Core with SA metric. Metric utilization is counted once for this server regardless of the number of installed instances.

Reading metric utilization

The first level of the All Metrics report shows a product and its metric quantity, which is the highest number of metric units that the product used during the specified period. The warning sign () indicates that the VM manager is not defined for at least one of the hosts on which the product is installed.
First level of the report
When you click the product name, the second level of the report shows all instances of product components that contributed to the metric quantity, including historical instances that are no longer installed. The value in the Server Cores column shows the number of physical cores on the host. For hosts without VM managers defined, the column shows the number of virtual cores. Thus, it is skipped in the calculation of the overall metric quantity.
Second level of the report
The fact that the value is skipped is reflected in the Core Metric column in the microsoft_physical_core_with_sa.csv file which is a part of the audit snapshot. Additionally, information about incomplete virtualization technology is provided in the Comment column.
Table 3. A fragment of the microsoft_physical_core_with_sa.csv file
Publisher Product Name Metric Quantity Server Cores Core Metric Comment
Microsoft Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition 44 12 12
Microsoft Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition 44 32 32
Microsoft Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition 44 0 0 Incomplete virtualization hierarchy