The case for SQL Server 2012 Enterprise (vs. Standard) edition

sql2012In celebration of the impending SQL Server 2014 release, and in recognition that a large percentage of my clients are on that cusp of the Standard/Enterprise licensing decision for the currently available version…let’s talk about SQL Server 2012! Specifically, why Enterprise edition might be a huge advantage – or even an imperative – for your shop.

One top 10 list of Enterprise advantages

Every shop has their individual needs and wants, and so every shop will have a different top 10 (or 8, or 17) reasons why Enterprise would benefit them over Standard. This is one list, based on a common set of needs I see at client sites, including performance, resource management, data warehousing, reporting, and change tracking.

Enterprise lets you use:

  1. More than 64GB memory per instance. This is an extremely important limit, especially for data warehouse servers, which feel about memory and CPU like marathon runners do about pancakes and syrup.
  2. Partition switching. This allows you to very quickly load or archive huge chunks of data in an online operation.
  3. AlwaysOn Availability Groups, especially for offloading read-only workloads to secondary replicas (and, you know have multiple standby instances ready to recover you from a disaster).
  4. Resource Governor. This allows you to customize limits on CPU and memory consumption. This is a HUGE deal, and shops are continuously surprised and disappointed to find that this is not a Standard feature. With Resource Governor, you can map a specific workload or set of workloads to a resource pool, to prevent it taking up too much of the system. These limits can be configured in real time, as they should be.
  5. Columnstore indexes. This new (ish) type of specialized index can massively reduce IO consumption. This is great news for data warehouses, that renowned resource hog.
  6. Online reindexing for tables with large data objects (like varchar(max)).
  7. Data warehouse improvements like star join query optimizations, and parallel query processing on partitioned tables and indices.
  8. Advanced Adapters and Advanced Transforms for SSIS, including “Dimension processing destination adapter”, “Data mining query transformation”, and “Fuzzy grouping and lookup transformations”.
  9. Change Data Capture, which lets you easily track inserts/updates/deletes on user tables. Fairly simple, efficient, auto cleanup, configurable.
  10. SSRS data driven subscription.  You can dynamically determine your recipients, parameters, etc., each time the subscription runs.

Abbreviated list of SQL Server 2012 Standard vs Enterprise features

You can get the full list of SQL Server features Supported by Edition on MSDN; here again is an abbreviated list of some of the better ones, IMHO.

Feature Standard Enterprise
Per instance maximum compute capacity Limited to lesser of 4 Sockets or 16 cores Operating system maximum
Per instance maximum memory utilized 64 Gb Operating system maximum
Database mirroring Safety full only High performance and full safety
AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances Node support: 2 Node support: Operating system maximum
Database snapshot No Yes
AlwaysOn Availability Groups No Yes
Online page and file restore No Yes
Online indexing No Yes
Online schema change No Yes
Fast recovery No Yes
Mirrored backups No Yes
Hot Add Memory and CPU No Yes
Table and index partitioning No Yes
Data compression No Yes
Resource Governor No Yes
Partition Table Parallelism No Yes
Multiple Filestream containers No Yes
Transparent database encryption No Yes
Parallel indexed operations No Yes
Automatic use of indexed view by query optimizer No Yes
Parallel consistency check No Yes
Integration Services – Advanced Adapters / Advanced Transforms No Yes
SSRS Data driven report subscription No Yes

Further Reading

General:

Per feature:

 

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14 thoughts on “The case for SQL Server 2012 Enterprise (vs. Standard) edition

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  2. Benjie Mercado

    Can I setup a SQL 2014 mirror with primary Enterprise Edition and The Mirror Server running on Standard Edition?

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