Quick thought, if the license was bought under the Processor (SQL Server 2008 R2 and earlier) then the core count is (almost) irrelevant. Theoretically you could have as many cores on the VM as on the actual CPUs have. Would be interesting to have an expert's opinion on how this maps to NUMA architecture.

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Guess the point is that if you have a processor license / socket license then the hardware is marking the upgrade path, not the software.