Is SQL developer edition exactly the same as enterprise edition?

  • Hey all,

    Regarding licensing of SQL server, we are considering the possibility of running SQL developer edition in our non production environments, but SQL enterprise edition in our production environments.  From a licensing perspective is looks like we would be allowed to do this, but what about from a testing perspective?  Are these two versions identical? (I'm leaning toward "yes")  I'm wondering if tests performed in our non prod environments would be valid as we release the changes to prod which runs enterprise edition.  If we were able to do this it would allow us to offload the non prod SQL VMs on to a different host which is not licensed for SQL enterprise edition.  This would help reduce resource consumption on those licensed hosts, and basically give us more room to run SQL servers.

    I'm just wondering if anyone is doing this today and looking for confirmation that this would not invalidate any testing.  I'm a former software tester so I can appreciate that you need to test in an environment that is equal to your prod environment.  Thanks in advance for any responses.

  • I haven't used this situation so I can't give you any experience. However in answer to whether the versions are identical, this link https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/editions-and-components-of-sql-server-version-15?view=sql-server-ver15 may help you.

  • In terms of function, yes. They're identical. In terms of supported hardware, etc., No, they're not identical. The developer version should function perfectly as a test system in non-production environments. That's its entire reason for being there.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

  • When you say offload or testing, not sure what you mean. You can perform development and test code. If you're moving production data and doing something like validation of data or some other production task, you are in violation of licensing.

  • When I mentioned "offload" I'm referring to where the VM lives.  We have certain on prem host servers that are licensed for SQL server, and others on prem host servers that are not.  We keep all SQL servers on the SQL licensed hosts for compliance.  In our environment we tend to run a lot of 3rd party applications, so on the SQL hosts we have about 125 SQL server virtual machines.  We are starting to approach a resource utilization level on those hosts that we want to closely monitor and don't wish to go much higher.  If I were to start installing SQL developer edition on our non prod virtual machines I could "offload" those VMs to other hosts which are not licensed for SQL server which would lower the resource utilization on our SQL licensed hosts.

    As part of our application testing when we would like to introduce a change to the application, or an updated version we would typically take a recent backup of the production database, restore it to our user acceptance testing environment  (We typically have DEV, UA, and PROD), development would apply the change, or new version of code to the UA environment, and users perform testing to certify the application prior to promoting that updated code to PROD.  It is important to test with recent production data in order to simulate the closest environment possible to the actual production environment.  I believe that this is a pretty standard process in the SDLC and I have followed this method with multiple different employers.   Would the act of restoring the production database to the UAT environment violate the licensing of SQL developer edition?

    I'm genuinely curious, are others essentially following the process that I outlined above?  If not, I'd like to hear how others are accomplishing similar tasks.  Are most people using SQL server development edition in the non prod environments, and enterprise edition in PROD only?

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by  tommiwan.
  • That is an allowed use.

     

    Most of my clients/customers use dev edition in dev/test/qa/uat and standard/enterprise in production.

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