Microsoft SQL Server 2022 Enterprise

SQL Server 2022 Enterprise: database server for large and business-critical workloads

Microsoft SQL Server 2022 Enterprise is the edition for databases where performance, availability and scalability are the main priorities. Microsoft assigns it to mission-critical workloads in data centres. An instance uses as many processor cores and as much memory as the operating system supports. This makes the edition suitable for large ERP and retail systems, databases with many concurrent connections, data warehouse applications and environments in which a database is to remain available even during maintenance or if a server fails.

High availability and maintenance during operation

Always On availability groups replicate several databases together to up to eight secondary replicas, up to five of them synchronously, and read/write connections are automatically redirected to the primary replica. In addition, Enterprise supports contained and distributed availability groups. Failover cluster instances support up to 16 nodes.

Many maintenance tasks are possible during operation: indexes can be created and rebuilt online, rebuilds can be paused and resumed later, and pages or files can be restored online. Memory and processors can be added during operation.

Performance and analysis

Intelligent query processing is fully included in Enterprise, including cardinality estimation feedback, degree of parallelism feedback and memory grant feedback, batch mode on rowstore and automatic tuning. With Resource Governor, processor, memory and I/O resources can be divided between applications, for example between reporting queries and ongoing transaction processing. For data warehouse scenarios, there are also star join optimisations, parallel processing of partitioned tables and automatic use of indexed views. Peer-to-peer replication distributes changes between several equal servers.

The security features include Transparent Data Encryption, Always Encrypted with secure enclaves, Ledger for SQL Server, row-level security, dynamic data masking and auditing. Via Azure Synapse Link and the link to Azure SQL Managed Instance, an on-premises server can be connected to Azure services.

Licensing model

SQL Server 2022 Enterprise is licensed per core. All physical cores of the server are licensed, with a minimum of 4 core licences per processor, in packs of 2 cores. Client access licences for users or devices are not required in this model.

Buy SQL Server 2022 Enterprise: licence and scope of delivery

You receive a product key for Microsoft SQL Server 2022 Enterprise. You select the number of core licences when ordering in the product variant. SQL Server 2022 is installed exclusively as a 64-bit version for x64 systems. The scope of delivery includes:

• the product key for Microsoft SQL Server 2022 Enterprise
• the download link for the installation file (all downloads are also available under Software Download)
• instructions for installation and activation (see also Guides and FAQ)
• the invoice by email

Once your payment has been received, your product key is displayed directly on the order confirmation page and also sent to you by email. After that, you can retrieve it again at any time: with a customer account under My Product Codes, without a customer account via the Guest Portal.

If you have any questions about installation or activation, our Support team is available around the clock by email. You will find offers for businesses, schools and public authorities in the B2B Area. You will find further server products in the category Windows Server and under Operating Systems.

System requirements

Minimum requirements according to Microsoft. The Enterprise edition is only supported on Windows Server, not on Windows 10 or Windows 11. Memory should be increased as the database grows.