hi everyone in this video we'll talk about sql server licensing support on servicenow sam now we all know that sql server is a very popular relational database it's ranked the third most relationship database as per the db engine ranking it's available in various editions enterprise and standard are the most popular and commercial ones but there are other editions as well and it can also be deployed in a hybrid environment which is includes on-prem and cloud and the licensing rules in an on-prem and cloud are very different i will talk about these licensing rules in a separate video in this particular video we'll talk about the challenges that sam managers face while licensing sql server and the various very first challenge is discovery wherein discovering the editions of sql server database and its components and in an on-premise and cloud environment is different difficult sql server is deployed in a virtuous virtualized environment that includes standalone servers as well as a cluster setup with virtual machines moving across and host definitely configured and determining the license compliance in that particular setup is uh is difficult um the third major reason reason is inability to optimally assign licenses for better cost savings support for bringing your own license an application of software assurance benefits like unlimited virtualization license mobility etc and once you are non-compliant then having a workflow to basically be compliant is another challenge that some managers increasingly face in today's demonstration we'll talk about the challenges of sql server deployments in an on-premise cluster environment and how sam managers could take help from sam pro to determine the license compliance and thereby remediate the same so let's get started in an on-premise cluster environment there is a cluster which is basically a virtual representation of servers and vms with virtual machines that can move across so you can see here that these virtual machines having sql server deployed uh can move across the entire uh number of servers in a cluster and that makes licensing a bit difficult because now you have to determine which is uh which is the layer on which you can apply sql server licensing remember that sql server enterprise can be licensed both on the host and the vm layer but sql server standard can only be licensed on the vmware there are a couple of challenges as well here for example you know there is software assurance benefits which is a microsoft benefit which many customers purchase and that provides benefits like unlimited virtualization and license mobility just for example unlimited virtualization allows an unlimited number of vms to move across uh the host or stay on that host if that particular host is fully licensed now all these uh licensing rules have to be applied um and thereby uh the license compliance has to be determined in the most optimal manner and servicenow sam pro helps in the same so here is one of the use cases that we will see shortly [Music] in this particular use case we have got a cluster setup we have got three hosts and there are about six vms on those hosts having sql server enterprise installed now as per license analysis you could license either the vm layer or the physical layer and you can see that licensing the physical layer requires less number of writes so what servicenow stamp pro does is that will automatically assign the licenses to the host and as you license the host completely and if you have got software assurance you get benefits of unlimited virtualization that means that all these six vms because they can potentially live on this host are also licensed now if uh while licensing we are left with less number of rights thereby one of these hosts will be unlicensed now all this uh is automatically determined by servicenow sam pro and uh it determines that which is the layer on which sql server enterprise licenses should be applied in the most optimal way it provides all this information to the sam manager so that they can determine how the licenses got applied and thereby servicenow sam pro provides a remediation workflow in case you are non-compliant now there are several use cases so this use case was about licensing the host but it could be also that it's more cheaper to license at the vm layer because of the license requirements so you can see here that software assurance is configured here and because of software assurance you get a license mobility benefit which allows those vms to uh basically be able to move across all the hosts in the cluster now this also is automatically determined by servicenow sam pro and in this particular case it is more cheaper to license at the vm layer and hence servicenow sample will apply those licenses at the vmware and similarly there are other use cases for example if software assurance is not available for the customer then how licenses could be applied so with that i'll move directly to the demonstration now i'm logged in and and sam pro i can see the different cards for microsoft and oracle i can click on microsoft which opens up the license workbench i can see the products deployed across the hybrid environment i can see the microsoft products across azure and aws so not only can i see the software installs on on-prem but also the installs across the cloud environment now for this use case as we are uh talking about 2019 enterprise i can see that uh uh sql server enterprise has got nice metric here as per core as we know that uh you know there are two licensed models one is server cal model and per core licensing model service now sam pro supports both of them you can see the licenses owned and the license is required that means that there are 52 licenses required but the purchase licenses are just 15 hence uh the organization is non-compliant by two licenses now what it does is that it generates remediation actions or options you can either purchase rights or you can remove unlicensed choice and if i click on them it will open up uh the reclamation candidates which are basically workflows that would help some manager take the necessary action i can also view the entitlements which uh the organization has purchased notice that in this particular case the organization has purchased both perpetual and software assurance rights so all those software assurance benefits like unlimited virtualization and license mobility are applicable for these particular entitlements now i understand that uh 50 licenses are owned and 52 licenses are required but which resources consume that licenses this is a very important determination for the sam manager so what sam manager can do is that they can click on the number 52 under license required section and which opens up the list of all devices or resources consuming licenses and their licensing status and how many licenses are required by them notice here that uh this particular resource is a part of a cluster it's assigned to an individual it requires about four licenses it is licensed and the is virtual flag is false that means that it's a physical device and this is the same for all these three resources what this essentially means is that servicenow sam pro has automatically determined that it is cheaper to license at the physical layer for this use case because the number of rights required are less and hence it is automatically applied those licenses at the physical host layer and so these are the physical hosts which are consuming the licenses now to understand more details about the installations of sql server i can as a sam manager go into the install section i can see all the sql server 2019 installs present for this particular cluster and i can see where that particular software is installed so i can click on this installed on section what it does is that it opens up the cmdbci form and i can see all the details related to that particular ci for example the ram the cpu count the core con etc which gives more details to the sam manager as to what is the underlying infrastructure for this particular ci i can even go to software installation section to understand what is the actual sql server install uh present on this particular ci record now all this information is automatically discovered and servicenow sam pro uses the cmdb to determine the license compliance for the same now going back i can go back to the license required section and because four licenses are uh uh are consumed for this particular cluster i can click on that number four and what it does is that it shows the description of what is the license metric and what is perco licensing model so if i want to understand as a sam manager what is the percola licensing model uh what what is unlimited virtualization what are the minimum number of cores that could be applied for this particular resource all this information is present for the sam manager to understand more details about this licensing model i can go to the license consumption details to understand what is the infrastructure requirements for this particular device so i can see that it's a one processor machine having two core but the licensing number of codes are four and this is because of the minimum course per processor licensing rule and this rule states that a minimum of four licenses are required per processor and hence that is automatically applied to this particular resource i can go to the software installs detail to understand what are all the sql server installations and what and what are those vms on which those sql server installed which can potentially live on this particular uh post as host affinity is not configured all the six vms can live on this particular resource and if there was any was definitely configured it would have shown up here now i can as a sam manager want to understand the infrastructure in more detail what is the relationships i can click on the dependency view which opens up more details about the infrastructure and its relationship i can see that this is a cluster it has got to host esx server and this esx server has got a number of vms running on it i can in fact load more to understand more details about this infrastructure and how the relationships are configured so this gives more details to the sam manager to understand how the licensing got applied and make a sense of the optimization that servicenow sambro has automatically applied in this particular use case so that concludes the demonstration on this topic thank you