Hi

I have a customer who is running SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition without Software Assurance. Because of the fact that the customer hasn't got Software Assurance on his server, he is bound to the 90-day reassign rule (from active to passive). If Microsoft releases updates or patches every week, how is the customer supposed to install patches/updates every week if he can't reassign the licenses within 90 days?

Thanks!

Non-active nodes do not need a license. If they're concerned about licenses, make sure to failover the SQL Server instance to the original node every time patches are installed

Thanks for your reply Edwin! I'm aware of the scenario you are describing.

Imagine this scenario:

Week1 - the customer takes the original node "Server A" out of production for patching and makes "Server B" the active node while patching "Server A" which then have become the passive node.

Week2 - new patches are released and the customer now wants to apply patches to the active "Server B".

Does the 90-day rule still apply? Are there any exceptions from the rules when it comes to patching?

Hi Rabenja,

If you update a SQL Server failover cluster instance on an active node, SQL Server services will be stopped. This causes SQL Server downtime. If you choose to make "Server B" as the active node, then install patches/updates on Server A . Once you activate the Passive Fail-Over server in a DR then that Passive Fail-over becomes the active server (during a fail-over event) and it must be fully licensed for SQL Server.  You should assign new licenses to the (now active) passive server, or reassign existing licenses from the primary server to the backup server once the instances of SQL Server on the primary server are inactive and no longer performing SQL Server workloads. Or else, your SQL Server 2012 licenses may only be reassigned (moved to another server) once every 90 days  This may not fit your fail-over strategy very well. If you have another fail-over event within 90 days you may not move the licenses to a fail-over server. For more information, see: http://blogs.technet.com/b/licensing/archive/2013/02/07/sql-server-fail-over-rights-versus-cold-disaster-recovery-rights.aspx

In addition, there is detail about how to apply a Microsoft SQL Server update to a failover cluster instance, you can review the following article.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958734/en-us

Regards,
Sofiya Li