Quote from: paybitcoin on January 28, 2013, 07:37:58 AM

This is not correct, you still need to have one CAL for every user you plan to have then. It is called 'multiplexing' and is technically not usable with a website.

Looks like your right on this point. In my day job we use the even more rare "per device" licensing structure so it wasn't an area I was that familiar with. Still I guess this proves your larger point that Microsoft licensing makes everything overly complex.

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Sure, but in your earlier example you posted a 256 GB RAM server with the example that 'RAM is cheap.' I agree that everything is pretty small now, but to get a server with mega RAM and find out you can't use it all because you need to pay MS more $$ is very frustrating.

Agree 256 was a poor example. Beyond 64GB of RAM (today future versions tend to increase based on Moore's law) it gets very expensive. I think part of the problem is that Microsoft has no license specifically designed for use as a website backend. It means their existing licenses are either too restrictive or too expensive. There would be real value if Microsoft both simplified their licensing and offered a "web server core" version dropping most of the corporate bakend functions and just provide a high memory, high compute platform for webservers. .... I am not holding my breath.

I guess Azure may be an option I have never done testing to see how responsive their database in the cloud can be to very high loads.

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4, 5 i agree with... 6 (32G RAM limit) bit me personally...

Yeah I can see why you would remember it then.

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It is wonderful not having to think about licensing restrictions, to be able to use the full capacity of your hardware at all times (buy a 256 GB RAM server? why not?), and not have arbitrary features locked out. And to not worry about things like the cost of CALs jumping 25% randomly with 2012 or BizSpark's 3 year grace period that runs out and leaves you paying MS for the rest of the company's existence. Sad

I agree there is value in open platforms and SQL Server is one of Microsofts most expensive and most restricted products. I think this got somewhat sidetracked (partially my fault). The original claim (not by you) was that asp.net doesn't scale and is expensive. asp.net can use any RDBMS as a backend and is highly scalable. For a new startup SQL Server is likely the easiest route as there is going to be some skills overlap but beyond 64GB or 16 cores I agree there is significant cost. It is something a startup would need to consider.

As a personal note:
To avoid vendor lock in whenever possible I try to keep the database code as ANSI SQL compliant as possible to allow a "backdoor" by keeping the migration costs & complexity to a minimum.