SQL Server Enterprise vs Standard: when you are overpaying
Many companies pay for Enterprise over two or three features they never turn on.
SQL Server has two editions that matter to your wallet: Enterprise and Standard. The price difference per core is enormous. The question is not which is better, but which you actually need. Plenty of Enterprise licenses were bought out of habit, not necessity.
01 The price gap is nearly four to one
Enterprise runs around USD $15,123 per core; Standard, about USD $3,945. Both are sold with a minimum of 4 cores per server.
USD $15,123 vs USD $3,945 per core
02 Standard covers most workloads
For normal transactional operation, Standard has plenty to spare. Most databases run comfortably on Standard without anyone noticing the difference.
03 Enterprise is justified by specific features
Advanced high availability, partitioning, data compression and unlimited memory are valid reasons. If you use none of them, you are paying for horsepower that stays parked.
04 Standard's RAM limit rarely gets in the way
Standard caps engine memory at 128 GB. It sounds like little, but for many mid-sized databases it is more than enough.
128 GB of RAM per instance on Standard
// An illustrative case
Imagine an 8-core server on Enterprise: 8 x USD $15,123 = USD $120,984. The same workload, if it uses no Enterprise features, runs on Standard: 8 x USD $3,945 = USD $31,560. That is almost USD $90,000 of difference for an edition that, in this case, nobody was taking advantage of.
Illustrative example with typical market figures, not a specific client.
// next step
Knowing whether you can drop to Standard means reviewing which features you actually use. A scan clears it up quickly. At dba.mx we quote it at a firm price before touching anything.