Hello,

I'm trying to crunch some numbers to see what the software costs involved are for hosting an application we are developing. Users will not be anonymous - they will need to log in.

SQL Server 2008:

SQL Server licensing is easy - it will be licensed per-processor. No real fuss there. The cost of CALs would be much higher for the number of users as compared to the processor licenses.

Windows Server 2008:

This is where it gets trickier. We need to license the OS for both the web servers (there will be a couple) plus the database servers (also a couple). The Web Servers could run on the Web Edition without a need for CALs, but if you continue reading, you will see that may not matter much because I will likely have user CALs for each user anyway.

We can't use the "External Connector" for any of the Windows licenses, because that doesn't cover customers who are paying to access a hosted application. We can't use the Web Edition for the SQL Servers because that license only allows database running on Web Edition to host data for the local web application (i.e. other web servers can't connect to it).

So that leaves us with the "full" editions of Windows Server for the database server OS. I find this a little rediculous, and I feel as though I must be missing something, but it looks to me like I will actually need to buy a CAL for every user who signs up to use our service.

I feel like I'm missing something because that means that for every user, I have to shell out $40 for a CAL. That could be one or two years' worth of revenue from each user for an inexpensive service!

Is there any way to serve a web application to authenticated users without paying for individual Windows Server CALs, if the web servers and SQL servers are seperate boxes?