As I was about to start deploying a SQL server for use by VMM, I was reminded about how SQL is licensed when it’s for the purpose of hosting System Center databases. If you’re licensing your Hyper-V hosts with Cloud Platform Datacentre licenses, any SQL licences required for your System Center DBs are already covered.
With that in mind, I decided that if this was actually a production build, I’d build out a 2 node SQL AlwaysON cluster that uses Availability Groups for hosting all System Center databases.
The only database we will place here (during the guide) is the VMM database. For reasons I’ll explain a little further on, I had to go with the Enterprise edition of SQL, be aware though that only SQL Standard licensing is covered when using the Cloud Platform Datacentre licensing model for System Center.
Continue reading “Part 1: Deploy SQL Server 2016 Availability Groups”