This is probably going to get me flamed, but trying to get in direct contact with someone at MS has been difficult so I decided to come here to ask my question.
Currently we have SQL Express 2008 installed on a Windows 2012r2 server. We will be moving to a Windows 2016 server in a few weeks, and the program we use that requires SQL recommends going to a full version of SQL server. The virtual machine that will have this program and SQL installed on it has 4 cores allocated to it. The program has a client program that is installed on a 2012r2 server with remote desktop service enabled with roughly 20 users logging in to this server to use the client program.
My question is, which licensing method should we use? My boss prefers the buy it once method, then never pay again unless an upgrade is needed. There are so many different ways of licensing SQL I'm not comfortable recommending the best license method for us.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.