Closed

Simplify Availability Group Licensing

The AlwaysOn Availability Group licensing in DPA doesn't really make a ton of sense. If I register an AG for monitoring, it consumes one instance license. If I have 10 AGs on a cluster of say 2 servers, I have to consume 10 licenses even though it only runs on 2 servers. I could register the two servers individually, but I would lose the ability to track that AG through a single view. I would have to keep switching back and forth between the two servers to track performance over time.

It would be nice if the licensing was decoupled from the AG listeners. So, I register all my cluster servers for licensing, and then I can add as many AGs as I want on top of those cluster servers. For example, if I had 10 AGs on Test Server 1 and Test Server 2 I would license those two servers. Currently I would have to license 10 if I wanted to register them via AG listener name.

Closing: Licensing is not couple to the AG listener, see reply below.

  • Thanks for the question Andrew.

    When you register an instance using an availability group listener, you see all the availability groups that instance is participating in - both as primary and secondary replica. In your example, you'd only have to use 1 license to see all 10 availability groups when you registering via the listener.

    If you choose to register each instance, you'll still see all the availability groups each instance is participating in.

    Either way, you see the status of all availability groups. 

    Hope this helps, let me know if you have any additional questions.