Welcome to the SQL Estate Manager support forum

Chris Lambrou

SQL Estate Manager is a part of the SQL Data Privacy Suite designed to help you discover and classify the data in your SQL Server Estate.

If you have a question about SQL Estate Manager, or a suggestion on how it could be improved, this is the forum for you. The development team will keep a close eye on this forum and we'll try to respond to you as quickly as we can.

You might also find what you're looking in our documentation pages:
https://www.red-gate.com/sem/documentation/

GVILA

Is SQL Estate Manager a new product from the acquisition of Syskit SQL Manager?

Also, is there a trial version available for download of just SQL Estate Manager?

ben_b

is the product intended to help with Microsoft licensing at all? Agree with the above that I would be interested in Standalone trial

Tugberk

Hi @GVILA!

> Also, is there a trial version available for download of just SQL Estate Manager?

SQL Estate Manager is only a part of the SQL Data Privacy Suite. However, currently the installer will allow you to pick and choose the products inside the suite. So, you can only select to install SQL Estate Manager if you wish to.

Hope this helps

Tugberk

Hi @ben_b!

Could you elaborate a bit more on what you meant by help with Microsoft licensing?

ben_b

Hi Tugberk

First off I'll have to admit that I've never been involved with Microsoft licensing and I find the whole thing really opaque. I would also say that in most companies I've worked in, there hasn't really been anyone who understood it!

As I understand it SQL Estate manager allows you to classify instances as Production, Test etc. It also picks up information regarding the number of cores, the sql server version/edition, the amount of memory on the server etc.

If you are only paying for production instances, could it aggregate the above information so you can compare the number of core, standard/enterprise licenses you should have vs the number you have actually purchased.

Other possible use cases might be recommendations - you may have a 2016 SP1 enterprise edition running with less than 128GB ram and no high-availability it might suggest that it would be worth considering standard edition. Or you may have a server running 2-cores but the minimum licensing is 4 cores so it may flag this up.

I know CAL licensing, software assurance and legacy editions (i.e. Business Intelligence edition etc) may add too many variables into the mix, but licensing is part of what I would consider managing a SQL Server estate.

Most companies I have worked in grow their production estate quite frequently (projects go live and a new production sql server is suddenly in play) but rarely decommission - and I very much doubt that licensing is considered when the pressure is on.

Any tool that could help bring even a little clarity to this would be welcomed

cheers
Ben

p.s. I still haven't installed the trial version of SQL Estate Manager so I need to do that - i'll also install the following and will probably have a better understanding of it all afterwards.

1. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/markm/2015/02/17/inventorying-sql-servers-with-the-microsoft-assessment-and-planning-toolkit-map/

2. idera inventory manager

Scott324

Chris Lambrou said:

SQL Estate Manager is a part of the SQL Data Privacy Suite designed to help you discover and classify the data in your SQL Server Estate.

If you have a question about SQL Estate Manager, or a suggestion on how it could be improved, this is the forum for you. The development team will keep a close eye on this forum and we'll try to respond to you as quickly as we can.

You might also find what you're looking in our documentation pages:
https://www.red-gate.com/sem/documentation/cookie clicker

The SQL Estate Manager forum provides a valuable platform for users to ask questions and suggest improvements, ensuring direct communication with the development team while also offering helpful documentation resources.