What is the performance point at which it makes sense to get Enterprise instead of Standard

  • We are looking to build a SQL Server server. We are looking to get SQL 2012, but not sure which version to get. At this point, I think Standard is all we need, but to make sure we cover our bases, I need to know at what point does it make sense to get Enterprise. Is there a number of users or a database size, amount of usable memory or something else that would be a reasonable indicator that we should get Enterprise?

  • Enterprise edition is a bit about features (TDE, Paritioning, etc) and you'd have to check if you need any of those.

    It's also about scale, but that's hard to judge. 3 users can bury a SQL Server with poorly written code, large data sets, and complex calculations. Simple web pages can allow a SQL Server to support 10,000 connections.

    If you look at the hardware limits, and you can reference some data to get an idea of load, you might be able to guess. If you're testing, use developer edition (don't but SE or EE) and see what level of load you can handle on hardware. Then decide what to buy.

  • Unfortunately, we don't really have the time to do a bunch of testing. The server will be hosting a few databases. A couple of them support an intranet application which mostly serves up reports. Nothing overly complicated. We are also installing a couple of new products that will be used by some of the staff. I don't believe there will be a huge number of users hitting the db at any given time. Our primary ERP system used a Progress database, so this is more of a support system. The extra feature set is not a deciding factor. It is really about what the performance break point is.

  • Unless you are planning on using some of the more advanced features or an obscene amount of processors and memory I don't think I would recommend Enterprise Edition. For me the STRONG need for those features or for the additional processor/memory.

    EE isn't really faster than SE in the database engine. So if you are equating editions to performance directly I wouldn't.

    Given the major cost difference I would not go to EE willy nilly without justification.

    CEWII

  • I'm not sure if this will help you, but there is a feature comparison guide between the different editions:

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645993%28v=SQL.110%29.aspx

  • Thanks for the feedback.

    I've seen the feature comparison, but that wasn't an issue.

  • jplankenhorn (7/22/2013)


    Thanks for the feedback.

    I've seen the feature comparison, but that wasn't an issue.

    If the features are not an issue than go with Standard.

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  • I'd tend to say Standard as well. Without the need for Enterprise features, and without a large load you can measure, stick with SE.

  • Thank you all. Much appreciated. I have passed on your recommendations to the powers that be.

  • For me the biggest limitation in Standard Edition is the RIDICULOUSLY LOW maximum memory. Fortunately you can supplant that with SSD storage to some degree, although I will caution anyone who thinks that is a magic bullet. PageIOLatch_xx can still get you, but they will be less onerous than the tens to perhaps thousands of milliseconds you may see with rotating media and too little RAM. The other biggie, and I mean potentially non-functional application biggie, is deadlocks. I have had several clients that have started throwing a blizzard of deadlocks after moving to SSD storage, including one that had to roll back to rotating media to get their system reusable!!

    Best,
    Kevin G. Boles
    SQL Server Consultant
    SQL MVP 2007-2012
    TheSQLGuru on googles mail service

  • Mostly it's about features, but it is also about upgrade paths. If you go with standard and later decide that is not enough you can upgrade to enterprise edition in-place. If you go enterprise and decide it's more than you need you can't 'downgrade' the license - you need to do a reinstall.

    Unless you are looking at specific enterprise features I'd suggest to go with standard edition.

  • TheSQLGuru (7/22/2013)


    For me the biggest limitation in Standard Edition is the RIDICULOUSLY LOW maximum memory. Fortunately you can supplant that with SSD storage to some degree, although I will caution anyone who thinks that is a magic bullet. PageIOLatch_xx can still get you, but they will be less onerous than the tens to perhaps thousands of milliseconds you may see with rotating media and too little RAM. The other biggie, and I mean potentially non-functional application biggie, is deadlocks. I have had several clients that have started throwing a blizzard of deadlocks after moving to SSD storage, including one that had to roll back to rotating media to get their system reusable!!

    What is your concern with Standard Edition memory - I would have thought that 64GB isn't ridiculously low

  • happycat59 (7/24/2013)


    What is your concern with Standard Edition memory - I would have thought that 64GB isn't ridiculously low

    The issue for me is that it hasn't moved with the times, so the limitation is getting increasingly out of date. To be honest, I think SQL Server (and Oracle) licensing in general is getting out of date.

    Speccing up to 512GB of RAM in a modern server is under £5000. That's small business territory, but you'd have to plump for Enterprise Edition to use it.

    Say you wanted to spec out a reasonable 4U server (40 cores, 512GB RAM etc.) it might come to around £25,000. To fully license it for any edition of SQL Server you'd need to spend £180k+ on EE licenses. That's a much higher ratio of hardware->software spend than it was 5-10 years ago.

  • TheSQLGuru (7/22/2013)


    .... The other biggie, and I mean potentially non-functional application biggie, is deadlocks. I have had several clients that have started throwing a blizzard of deadlocks after moving to SSD storage, including one that had to roll back to rotating media to get their system reusable!!

    Very interesting:blink:

    So the increased IO latency is keeping the code from deadlocking itself!

    Never thought of that - I would normally expect to see the bottleneck shifting towards latches of some sort.

    Weird huh. :alien:

    Cheers,

    JohnA

    MCM: SQL2008

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