power bi report server licensing

[Jc007]

If I own a server, fully licensed with SQL Server Enterprise Edition with Software Assurance. running SQL Server 2019 on vm1. It has 4 cores.

will that cover to run a power bi report server on vm2 with 4 cores? or do have i have to pay for 4 more cores.

[d_gosbell]

---

@Jc007 wrote:

will that cover to run a power bi report server on vm2 with 4 cores? or do have i have to pay for 4 more cores.

---

No, if this is a separate VM with separate cores you will have to pay for 4 more cores. You don't have to run the database engine on vm2 if you don't want to (you can put the databases for Report Server on vm1) but you have to pay for SQL cores on the machine running Report Server. 

[Jc007]

HI 

What you suggested is helpful. I need little more clarification on this. what you said does that hold true in case Vm2 only has reporting service (powerbi reporting service) vm to does not have any databases.

Does it hold true when you have the same 

[d_gosbell · Accepted solution]

---

@Jc007 wrote:

what you said does that hold true in case Vm2 only has reporting service (powerbi reporting service) vm to does not have any databases.

---

It does not matter what else is on vm2 if it is running Power BI Report Server, the cores for vm2 need to be covered by SQL Enterprise Licenses with SA. Even if there is no database engine installed at all.

If you were to install Report Server on vm1 you would not need additional licenses, but it's generally not advisable to run other workloads on a SQL Server if you can avoid it