Improved Reduced Core License Optimization
Overview
In late 2025, AWS announced support for reducing cores for “License Included” (LI) EC2 instances for both Windows Server and SQL Server. Cloudamize now fully supports reducing cores to optimize license costs for both SQL Server and Windows Server on License Included instances, in addition to our original support for Bring Your Own License (BYOL).
License Pricing (Per Hour/Per Core)
Cloudamize utilizes the following per-hour, per-core cost table to calculate savings for License Included instances.
Family | Windows | SQL Enterprise | SQL Standard | SQL Web |
All families except those below | $0.0460 | $0.4210 | $0.1660 | $0.0630 |
m8i-flex, c8i-flex, r8i-flex, m7i-flex | $0.0437 | $0.4187 | $0.1637 | $0.0606 |
t3, t3a | $0.0184 | $0.3934 | $0.1384 | $0.0353 |
Licensing Minimums & Increments
SQL Server: Minimum of 4 cores; licensed in 2 core pairs.
Windows Server: Minimum of 2 cores; licensed in 2 core pairs.
UI Changes & Reporting
The Cloudamize interface has been updated to unbundle licensing from compute costs, providing a more transparent view of your Cloud TCO.
Reallocation of Costs
Historical View: Previously, the License tab total only included the cost of SQL Licenses bundled with EC2 (aka “License Included”). Compute tab total included bundled OS licenses (Windows, RHEL, and SUSE). Because of this, OLA Designs configured with BYOL (Bring Your Own License) for SQL Server showed a "License" cost of $0.
Below is an example of OLA Design without reduced core license optimization. The $7.2m is the cost of the SQL Server Licenses (not including Windows Server Licenses, which are included in the Compute total)
Current View: OS licenses (Windows, RHEL, and SUSE) and SQL Server license costs are now displayed on the License tab and included in the License total instead of in the Compute total.
Below is the same OLA Design for the reduced core license optimization. The cost of the Windows Licenses has been moved out of the Compute total and into the License total. In this case, the Reduced Core License optimization resulted in a savings of $1.4m
Reduced Compute Total: The Compute total is now reduced by the corresponding license amount. For any assessment with Windows or SQL Server, the total License cost will now always be > $0.
How Reduced Cores are Displayed
The Summary, Compute, and License tabs feature standardized columns to track core optimization:
Column | Description |
Available vCPU | The number of cores physically available in the recommended EC2 instance. This value is used to calculate the reduced core license cost. |
Recommended vCPU | The number of cores required to meet the performance STLs (Service Level Thresholds) specified by your plan. |
The screenshot below shows the differences between Available vCPU and Recommended vCPU after the Reduced Core License Optimization.
Benefits of Reduced Core License Optimization
Lower TCO: Significantly reduce the licensing portion of your AWS bill for both BYOL and License Included workloads.
Performance Retention: Maintain the memory and disk throughput of a larger instance while only paying for the cores your application actually uses.
Standardized View: Easily identify where core reductions are applied across all major reporting tabs.
If you have any queries regarding Reduced Core License optimization, please reach out to the helpdesk at helpdesk@cloudamize.com.