Compare SQL Server Enterprise and Standard edition features
The following table is a short version of the list of SQL Server Enterprise edition features and possible alternatives in the Standard edition. For additional information, see a more extensive feature comparison (attached) .
Functional area | Feature | Enterprise edition | Standard edition | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Scale limits | Maximum number of processors or cores per instance | OS maximum | 4 sockets or 24 cores | See DB instance class support for SQL Server on Amazon RDS for SQL. |
Maximum memory used per instance | OS maximum | 128 GB (SQL Server 2016 and later) | ||
Maximum memory-optimized data size per database | Unlimited memory (SQL Server 2014 and later) | 32 GB (SQL Server 2016 and later) | ||
High availability | Always On availability groups | Yes | Basic availability groups (SQL Server 2016 and later) | The Multi-AZ feature of Amazon RDS replicates database updates across two Availability Zones to increase durability and availability. For planned maintenance and unplanned disruptions, Amazon RDS automatically fails over to the standby. |
Online indexing | Yes | No | Where possible, plan for these activities during a downtime window. | |
Online schema change | Yes | No | ||
Resumable online index rebuilds | Yes (SQL Server 2017 and later) | No | ||
Accelerated database recovery | Yes (SQL Server 2019) | Yes (SQL Server 2019) | Both SQL Server editions support ADR in SQL Server 2019. | |
Scalability and performance | Table and index partitioning | Yes | Yes (SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later) | |
Data compression | Yes | Yes (SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later) | ||
Partition table parallelism | Yes | Yes (SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later) | ||
In-Memory OLTP | Yes (SQL 2014 and later) | Yes (SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later) | ||
Delayed durability | Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later) | Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later) | ||
Columnstore | Yes (SQL Server 2016 and later) | Yes (SQL Server 2016 and later) | ||
Interleaved execution for multi-statement table valued functions | Yes (SQL Server 2017 and later) | Yes (SQL Server 2017 and later) | ||
Intelligent Database: batch mode on rowstore | Yes (SQL Server 2019) | No | Not available in Standard edition, but you can take advantage of the other features of Intelligent Database. | |
Intelligent Database: approximate count distinct | Yes (SQL Server 2019) | Yes (SQL Server 2019) | ||
Intelligent Database: table variable deferred compilation | Yes (SQL Server 2019) | Yes (SQL Server 2019) | ||
Intelligent Database: scalar UDF inlining | Yes (SQL Server 2019) | Yes (SQL Server 2019) | ||
Security | Transparent database encryption (TDE) | Yes | Yes (SQL Server 2019) | |
Contained databases | Yes | Yes |
