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Cpu licensing

Author

Topic

SamC
White Water Yakist

3467 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 14:07:25

Is it difficult to install / setup SQL 2000 so it runs in a single CPU of a 2 CPU server? Ild like to purchase only a 1 CPU license.

Sam

tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

38200 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 14:11:44

Nope, it's very easy. You just choose the per CPU option in the installation, then tell it how many CPUs. Then you just go to the server properties (sp_configure in QA or right click on the server in EM and go to properties) and configure it for 1 CPU.

We had to do this on two of our servers due to cost.

Tara

SamC
White Water Yakist

3467 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 14:18:10

Does this allow SQL to float in 1 cpu or the other? If not, my next question is can IIS, floating in either CPU, become a problem contending for the cpu SQL uses?

Sam

tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

38200 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 14:21:21

In the server properties, you specify which CPU to use. It will not use the other one.

Why are you using IIS on the database server? This is a bad idea if you are concerned about contention for the CPU.

Tara

SamC
White Water Yakist

3467 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 14:44:08

Well, it's a low utilization server.

I'd just like to know that IIS and SQL can take advantage of the two CPUs if SQL is fixed in one CPU. The question is: If an SQL event occurs when IIS is running in the SQL CPU, will Windows 2000 move IIS to the other CPU so SQL can run

There must be some capability in Win 2000 to manage the application assignments among the processors?

Thanks Tara,

Sam

jasper_smith
SQL Server MVP & SQLTeam MVY

846 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 16:09:31

Not to sound like the license police

but if the server has 2 physical operating CPU's and you want to run SQL on it in per processor licensing mode you have to buy 2 CPU licenses or pull one of the processors out. You can't simply use CPU affinitisation to tell it to use 1 processor. The only time this rule gets flexible is when you have >16 processors where you pay for what you use.

HTH
Jasper Smith

0x73656c6563742027546f6f206d7563682074696d65206f6e20796f75722068616e6473203f27

SamC
White Water Yakist

3467 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 16:17:22

So you had to go and rain on my parade!

I was looking on Ebay, there you can buy a *new* copy of SQL SE 1CPU for about $2,300. Is this real or imitation Microsoft software?

Sam

SamC
White Water Yakist

3467 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 16:19:30

Jasper,

What is CPU affinity anyway? [smilie]dumb expression[/smilie]

Sam

From: [url]http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsql2k/html/sql_asphosting.asp[/url]

quote:
Processor Affinity

Our tests demonstrate that manually allocating processors to specific instances of SQL Server with affinity mask can give a performance boost of up to 80 percent, assuming the workload is consistent, which is typical for ASP workloads. The best results were achieved when an instance of SQL Server did not have to share processors with other server application processes.

Performance gain with CPU affinity

Tests were run on 500 databases, on each of 8 instances with optimal memory configuration. The workload for each instance is identical. Allocating each of the 8 instances to one of the 8 CPUs gives an 80 percent throughput improvement compared to the default processor affinity setting.

Why using CPU affinity can improve performance

By default, each thread of an instance of SQL Server is scheduled to the next available processor. The CPU affinity mask setting can be used to restrict an instance to only a subset of CPUs, and also ensures that each thread always uses the same processor between interrupts. This reduces the swapping of the same thread among multiple processors, and increases the cache hit ratio on the second-level cache. However, CPU affinity setting needs to be used carefully because workloads on different CPUs cannot be balanced dynamically if the workloads on each instance are not even.

When running multiple instances on the same server with multiple processors, assigning processors to specific instances by setting CPU affinity can reduce the number of active threads per processor and also reduce context switches, thus better utilizing the second-level cache.

Edited by - SamC on 05/21/2003 16:55:32

MichaelP
Jedi Yak

2489 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 17:17:50

Recently, they changed Per Processor licensing to allow you to run SQL on one CPU and only pay for one CPU license, even though you have two CPU's in the machine.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/processor.asp

As always, consult your Microsoft licensing specialist, don't take my word on it!

Michael

<Yoda>Use the Search page you must. Find the answer you will.</Yoda>

chadmat
The Chadinator

1974 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 17:24:30

But it says you have to make to proc inaccesible to the OS, not just SQL.

quote:

If you have made a processor inaccessible to all operating system copies on which the SQL Server software is set up to run

-Chad

http://www.clrsoft.com

Software built for the Common Language Runtime.

SamC
White Water Yakist

3467 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 17:29:50

Ambiguous isn't it? What are they expecting that CPU to do while the others are running Windows?

Sam

MichaelP
Jedi Yak

2489 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 17:35:39

Slap a single hyper-threaded Xeon in there and you only need one CPU license :)

Michael

<Yoda>Use the Search page you must. Find the answer you will.</Yoda>

SamC
White Water Yakist

3467 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 17:47:33

Michael,

That's my plan B. Replace the two 750 Mhz CPUs with a 1 Ghz CPU.

I'm wondering would that be a complete gain or would there be some loss?

Sam

SamC
White Water Yakist

3467 Posts

Posted - 2003-05-21 : 17:57:20

quote:
Recently, they changed Per Processor licensing to allow you to run SQL on one CPU and only pay for one CPU license, even though you have two CPU's in the machine.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/processor.asp

As always, consult your Microsoft licensing specialist, don't take my word on it!

I called Microsoft, and got it straight. SQL must be licenced for all CPUs running windows. The quote above refers to excluding CPUs running some other operating system.

Looks like my best bet is to upgrade the 2 CPUs to a higher clocked single CPU.

Sam

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