Evaluate SQL Server Developer edition

Overview

SQL Server Developer edition is a free edition of SQL Server that contains all the features of the Enterprise edition and can be used in any non-production environment. In the cloud, where Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) licensing can't be used, SQL Server Developer edition is a good way to save on costs without having to provide licenses for development and testing workloads. This is especially true for teams that run large development and testing environments and seek to reduce unnecessary costs.

A production environment is defined as an environment that's accessed by the end users of an application (such as an internet website) and is used for more than gathering feedback or acceptance testing of that application. Other scenarios that constitute production environments include:

For more licensing information, see Amazon Web Services and Microsoft: Frequently Asked Questions in the AWS documentation.

Cost impact

If you use SQL Server Developer edition for non-production workloads, you can save 100 percent of your current SQL Server licensing costs for development and testing environments.

The following table compares the cost of different SQL Server editions running with 4 vCPUs and using on-demand pricing in the us-east-2 Region. This applies to scenarios that rely on license-included instances from AWS.

Cost optimization scenario

After a data integrity company made a new acquisition, it wanted to migrate the newly acquired workload from its current location on a managed hosting provider to consolidate with its other workloads in the AWS Cloud. Initial pricing showed that the company's SQL Server workload would cost 60 percent more running on AWS than on the current managed service provider. A MACO SME evaluated the estimation and found that the customer was actually paying for SQL Server licenses at the managed hosting provider for their development and testing environments. By switching the non-production workloads to SQL Server Developer edition during the migration, the company reduced their SQL Server licensing by 40 percent.

SQL Server license included on Amazon EC2

If you have SQL Server on EC2 instances that use license-included AMIs, it's not possible to do a direct conversion from Enterprise edition to Developer edition. The licensing costs for license-included instances are bound to the AMI. Even if SQL Server is uninstalled from within the operating system, the EC2 instance is still charged for licensing costs.

To convert to Developer edition, you must download SQL Server Developer edition, install it on a new EC2 instance, and then migrate your databases. You can migrate SQL Server databases between EC2 instances by using a variety of methods. For more information, see SQL Server database migration methods in the Migrating Microsoft SQL Server databases to the AWS Cloud guide. You can also use the Automated SQL Server Developer solution to prep the new instance that you plan to migrate to.

SQL Server BYOL on Amazon EC2

If you have SQL Server instances that use a BYOL, you can choose from the following in-place conversion or side-by-side downgrade options:

Additional resources