SQL Enterprise Edition vs SQL Enterprise Core Based Licensing Edition

There is a common point of confusion, when DBAs decide what version of SQL Server to install. Until SQL Server 2012, if you needed Enterprise Edition, then things were straight forward. When SQL Server 2012 was released, however, things changed, with the release of core-based licensing.

Subsequently, SQL Server Enterprise Edition should not be installed in most cases. It is designed as a "tide-me-over" edition, to see companies through, as they move from CAL based, to core based licenses.

What a lot of people do not realize, is there is actually a technical difference between the two editions. The two products have different SKUs and SQL Server Enterprise Edition will only support a maximum of 20 cores.

If you have a server large enough to test this out, you can see for yourself, by running the following query:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM sys.dm_os_schedulers WHERE status = 'VISIBLE ONLINE'

If you are using Enterprise Edition, then the maximum value returned will be either 20, or 40 if the server has hyper-threading turned on.

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