How To License Your SQL Server on Google Cloud

In my previous post, we deployed SQL Server 2016 on a Windows Server 2012 R2 Operating system on Google Cloud. When you use the SQL Server Public Images, SQL Server and Windows Server Licensing cost are included in the billing. The default SQL Server instance is pre-installed and is bundled along with the Virtual Machine. This is very straightforward and pretty much assures that you are license compliant. But, how about bringing your own SQL licenses to Google Cloud? In a lot of scenarios, Customer would have already purchased SQL Server and is running active workloads on-premises. In order to bring your existing SQL Server licenses to the cloud, you need to follow certain guidelines. In this post, I am going to talk about how to license your SQL Server on Google Cloud.

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How To License Your SQL Server on Google Cloud

I have already mentioned about licensing SQL Server 2014 and 2016 in my previous posts. When you want to move your existing on-premises licenses to the Cloud (Azure, AWS or GCP) you need to have the following items checked:

You are either running SQL Server 2012, 2014 or 2016 Standard or Enterprise Edition
You are an eligible (Enterprise Agreement EA, Enterprise “Subscription Agreement”, and Microsoft Open Value Agreement) Microsoft Volume Licensing customer with an active software assurance.
You have completed the license mobility process from here. Guidance for completing the process is available here.

License mobility is only applicable to Applications (SQL, SharePoint, CRM etc.) and not the operating system itself (Windows Server).

In the case of moving your SQL resources to Google Cloud, use the following:

Authorized Mobility Partner Name: “Google, Inc”
Authorized Mobility Partner Website URL: “http://cloud.google.com”

You would then need to wait for the verification completion email from Microsoft. This typically takes 1-2 business days. Once complete, you should be ready to move your existing on-premises licenses to Google Cloud. Also, you need to remember that SQL Server uses paper-based licensing and is not technically enforced (features, functionality etc). All these steps are purely from the licensing compliance perspective.

Official Documentation Links

Microsoft Product User Rights
Google Cloud Documentation on this subject.

My Previous Posts on Licensing:

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