I'm perfectly comfortable with the per-core licensing. When they switched to the per-core licensing, they awarded per-core licenses according to how many cores were on your existing server. In our case, with SQL 2008, we were licensed for two processors. Each processor had six cores, so we were awarded 12 core licenses.

Nor am I uncomfortable with a benefit of SA being the right to use a second server as the failover server, or Microsoft marketing SQL 2016 without the failover option. Microsoft has a right to do that.

What I question is their right to sell us an SQL 2008 license, a product that had the failover option without the requirement for SA, and then sell us SA, a product that was touted as one that would provide us upgrades, and then come out and tell us that the "upgraded" license no longer has the failover option. Rather, it's associated now with SA, so that in effect you need to buy it again.

This has all the markings of a shell game. As I said, it would be interesting to hear their justification for this kind of policy. I understand their motivation -- to commit their base into an ongoing revenue stream --but it hardly justifies what's taken place.