Licensing SAP SQL Anywhere in Virtual Environments - Updated

[JasonHinsperger]

I am providing here an update to running SAP SQL Anywhere in a virtual environments (VE).

Is SAP SQL Anywhere Supported running in a virtual environment in production?

Yes.  One of SQL Anywhere's strengths is its support for a wide variety of platforms, including virtual ones.  We will support our customers running SQL Anywhere on any OS in a virtual environment providing that OS is listed as supported (see link above).  To ease tracking and diagnosis for technical support issues, our support team will sometimes ask customers to reproduce issues outside of the VM environment in order to remove as many irrelevant factors as possible when diagnosing a problem. If we do run into issues that are directly caused by running in a virtual environment, we can work with our customers and the virtualization vendor to diagnose and resolve these issues.

How is SQL Anywhere licensed in a virtual environment? 

For user based licensing it makes no difference whether or not the server is running in a virtual environment.

For chip licensing, you purchase a license for each chip on which you wish to run SQL Anywhere.  You are entitled to run as many instances of SQL Anywhere as you want on each chip you have licensed, regardless of whether or not virtualization is involved.  This means you can run as many SQL Anywhere servers you want on as many VEs as you want on the chips that are licensed for SQL Anywhere.  This is different from the Sybase licensing policy, which required a separate license for each VM, essentially treating each VM as an independent piece of hardware.

Here are some examples that will hopefully clarify things.

Example 1

This configuration shows a server machine with 1 physical CPU chip with 1 core.  Two  virtual environments (VEs) have been created.  Two instances of SQL Anywhere are running on one VE and one instances is running on the other.

Licensing:
Chip based - Each physical chip on which you wish to run SAP SQL Anywhere must be licensed.  In this case, a single chip license must be purchased.  This permits an unlimited number of instances of the database server on that licensed chip. 
Server & Users - Each VE running a database server needs a database server license.  There are 2 VEs. Each licensed VE can permit an unlimited number of instances.  Therefore, 2 database server licenses are required, plus a user license for each user connecting to each server.

Example 2

This configuration shows a box with 2 dual core CPU chips.  Two VEs have been created.  Two instances of SQL Anywhere are running on one VE and one instance is running on the other.

Licensing:
Chip based - Each physical chip on which you wish to run SAP SQL Anywhere must be licensed.  There are 2 physical chips, therefore, 2 chip licenses are required.
Server & Users -  Each VE running a database server needs a database server license.  There are 2 VEs. Therefore, 2 database server licenses are required, plus a user license for each user connecting to each server.

Example 3

This configuration shows a box with 4 CPU chips.  Five VEs have been created.  Four VEs are running SQL Anywhere accessing a single CPU chip.  The Fifth VE is running SQL Anywhere accessing two CPU chips.

Licensing:
CPU based - Each physical chip on which you wish to run SAP SQL Anywhere must be licensed.  There are 4 physical CPU chips, therefore, 4 chip licenses are required.
Server & Seat -  Each VE running a database server needs a database server license.  There are 5 VEs. Therefore, 5 database server licenses are required, plus a user license for each user seat connecting to each server.