Good morning, soon we plan to migrate a SQL Server Express to a SQL Server Enterprise. This SQL is hosted on a virtual machine with 8 cores on 2 sockets.
A priori the SQL Express edition only uses one socket of the four cores.
I am reviewing the documentation and it is not clear to me if at the time of migrating the SQL I must buy licenses for all sockets / cores or I can only buy a license for one socket (4 cores).
How to license individual virtual machines using the Per Core licensing model
Similar to the Per Core licensing model in physical OSEs, all virtual cores (v-cores) supporting virtual OSEs that are running instances of SQL Server 2019 software must be licensed accordingly. To license individual VMs using the Per Core model, customers must purchase a core license for each v-core (or virtual processor, virtual CPU, virtual thread) allocated to the VM, subject to a four-core license minimum per VM. For licensing purposes, a v-core maps to a hardware thread.
