Finding information about SQL Server 2016 licensing

Now that SQL Server 2016 is here, it's time to focus a little on the product's licensing. Since computing has moved from server processor socket counting to processor core counting, in this version of SQL Server, Microsoft is following suit.

Core licenses are available for both the Standard and Enterprise editions, and if you are developing a solution where the end-application is a public web application, you must always use core based licensing. For the Standard edition, there's also available a traditional Server+CAL licensing model for in-house/intranet usage.

At this writing, the Standard Edition Core License "2-Pack" costs around USD $3500; thus, single core licenses are around $1700. If you run SQL Server directly on the hardware (no virtualization), you must license all available processor cores. When using virtualization, you can select the appropriate number of virtual cores for the VM, and then only license those for SQL Server.

You must purchase a minimum of four core licenses for each physical processor on your server when you install SQL Server directly on the hardware. This means the minimum cost for SQL Server Standard Edition installed on a small-scale physical server costs around $7000. This allows for unlimited users.

There's also available a nice PDF licensing guide, which goes through licensing details in 31 pages.

Hope this helps!