Microsoft Virtual Core with SA

The number of virtual cores can be greater than the number of physical cores that are available on the hosts. The minimal number of licensable cores is four. It means that when a virtual machine is assigned one or two cores, four cores are reported. If the number of cores is not a multiple of 2, it is rounded up.

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 virtual cores for the discovered Microsoft software, the licensed software must have Software Assurance.

Limitations

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 one virtual machine

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise is installed on a virtual machine that is assigned two virtual cores. According to the licensing terms, the minimal number of licensable cores is four. Metric utilization for Microsoft SQL Server is 4.

Table 1. Metric utilization for software on one virtual machine

	Virtual machine 1
Virtual cores	2
Core licenses needed	4

Example 2: Software is deployed on two virtual machines

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise is installed on two virtual machines that run on the same physical host. The host has 10 cores. The first virtual machine is assigned 8 cores. The second virtual machine is assigned 16 cores. Metric utilization is the sum of virtual cores that are available to Microsoft SQL Server and equals 24.

Table 2. Metric utilization for software on two virtual machines

Summary for complex table

	Virtual Machine 1	Virtual Machine 2
Virtual cores	8	16
Physical cores on the host	10
Core licenses needed	24

Example 3: Software is deployed on a virtual machine that was assigned additional cores

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise is installed on a virtual machine that is assigned 10 cores. The virtual machine is assigned two additional cores. Metric utilization for Microsoft SQL Server is 10 until the day when additional cores were added. Starting from the next day, metric utilization is 12.

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 Virtual Core with SA metric. The second instance uses the Microsoft Physical Core with SA metric. To ensure that the first instance contributes to the calculation of the virtual core based metric, reassign this instance to the proper metric. For more information, see: Assigning components to products.

Example 5: Two software instances use the same metric and are installed on the same virtual machine

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise are discovered on one virtual machine. Both instances use the Microsoft Virtual Core with SA metric. Metric utilization is counted once for this virtual machine 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.

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 values in the Logical Processors column show the number of virtual cores that are reported on the computers where the component is installed. Because the minimal number of licensable cores is four, virtual machines with one and two cores are counted as having four cores. This requirement is not reflected in the Logical Processor column because the column shows the actual number of processor cores.