Software Assurance

"Important: The Software Assurance 24x7 Problem Resolution Support benefit is retired as of February 1, 2023. Starting on February 1, 2023, Software Assurance incidents won’t be usable or allocated." (1)

BUT... see the additional benefits for SCE customers

Benefits

MS-SQL Licensing

Fail-Over Servers for HA/DR

Can be...
  • AlwaysOn Availability Group
  • AlwaysOn Failover Cluster (FCI)
  • Log Shipping
  • I believe DR could be VMware SRM.
  • SE or EE
  • Any version (if covered by SA).
  • Bare-metal, VM, Container

Can use secondaries for...
  • Backup
  • Maintenance (CheckDB)
  • Basic Monitoring
  • DR Tests

Cannot use secondaries for...
  • Reads
  • Writes

Any secondary can have the same number or less cores than the Primary, but NOT more. You could, in theory, license the Primary for more cores than it has in order to get around this situation.
HA is assumed to be "sync" and DR is assumed to be "async" with maximum of 1 HA and 1 DR on-prem plus 1 DR in Azure. Any additional replicas will need the same number of core licenses as the Primary.
Note that this benefit only applies to the SQL Licensing. i.e. all the other costs of running a database server in Azure stilll apply. (Although the Azure Hybrid Benefit should mean that's at a reduced rate).

Unlimited Virtualisation

The same model also applies to Containers
Compare to: Licensing by Virtual Machine

License Mobility

With License Mobility through Software Assurance, you can deploy certain server application licenses purchased under your Volume Licensing agreement in an Authorized Mobility Partner’s datacenter. (2)

Bibliography