If I have four jobs servers the total license key requirements is x10.
Here is the scenario.
Available licenses for our organisation in the SAP Support license area is x16 available. I was told by my line manager that we have purchased x10 licences.
Question
If I select required x10 and obtain a single license key, thus x6 remaining and available) can I use that same license key on all four job servers?
Or do I have to request four separate licences for each of our job servers?
Bear in mind that you cannot select 0.5 of a license key in the SAP Support license key area only whole numbers. Which means 4x4 = 16 more than what I was told we had purchased which is x10, but line manager might be mistaken.
The aggrevating factor in this scenario is if I do have to request four separate licence keys. My actual license key requests would be 3+3+3+3 = 12 and x2 of a license key would be wasted.
I have asked SAP Support for an answer and at the moment for last 3 weeks its email tennis, I chase for answer and response is he will chase it up, last communication 5 days ago.
So back to question can I use the same license key on each of our 4 job servers?
Advice is to always check with your SAP accounts department because the answer if often as clear as mud and not very forthcoming. It took us quite an effort to get the answer we required.
Despite finding many a SAP document to the contrary for us installing job server on VM quad core it is x1 license for each CPU, thus x4 CPU = x4 licenses.
I am not with SAP, but we do sell their products. Generally, you summarized correctly. A license is for a CPU (or fractional CPU in the case of cores) and you may run as many job servers on those cores as you desire. From SAP’s standpoint this is self limiting, since the same amount of CPU minutes can be consumed at maximum by either 1 or 10 job servers.
There are even cases where SAP will recommend splitting up repositories into multiple job servers to reduce the handling load in environments with large numbers of clients executing jobs.
Please do talk to your SAP account manager (if you’re an SAP direct) or to your SAP Partner if you are licensed through them. And always check your actual license agreement copy as well.
Your general calculation appears correct but there are various other factors involved. For instance, what is the exact license type you are holding and how old is that license? If it is no longer a current license model, then a license conversion to a current model may be required. This is most certainly true if you have not transferred your license from BO paper to SAP paper or if you did so back in 2008/2009 and are still on a very old license model that no longer applies. (While you are legally licensed, even on old paper or under old license models, you will often not be able to make any changes or purchase any additional features/licenses as that model and SKU no longer exist).
It also depends on what other SAP software you are using within the organisation and how Data Services was purchased. Was it a standalone purchase or was it bundled with other products (e.g. SAP ECC or S/4, SAP BusinessObjects, SAP HANA) and what does the contract say? SAP may sometimes make certain special offers that may, or may not, contain additional licensing conditions or may change licensing conditions - again, this will in your actual license agreement between your company and SAP. I always recommend checking what is in there first, as it may highlight certain conditions or constraints that might otherwise be overlooked.
And finally, if you are working for a large enterprise or public sector, you may actually be licensed through a large volume license deal that allows your company to use a very large bundle of SAP products with different limits and constraints than standalone licenses.
Sorry if I make this sound extremely complicated but, well, SAP licensing is complicated. I deal with it on a daily basis and I cannot count the number of different variations I’ve seen. So my usual answer is… “it depends!”…
We now have x16 licences and will very soon be creating x4 virtual servers/job servers each with x4 CPUs on them. Thus the 16 licenses consumed. However when installing the client tool especially Data Services Designer for me and my colleagues on our own workstations we need to enter a licence key during installation, for now I have used a single licence key which is the same licence key for our first server. Do we need additional licences to install the client only software?
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