Over the past few weeks, I've been working with a customer, in order to implement a high availability (HA) solution.

In the past, I do not bother with charges and costs incurred, since, in the past, I'm just a technical person, not a technopreneur. However, I do now, since it directly affects my earnings.

Windows Server 2003 has some odd licensing requirement, as compared to Microsoft SQL Server 2000. In order to design the customer's HA solution, I have come up with a Active/Passive two-node cluster solution. Hence, that requires Windows Server 2003 Enterprise, and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise.

For SQL, I only need to purchase 1 license, however, for Windows, I need to purchase 2 licenses. That's kinda strange, since, in the cluster, only 1 node will be active at a time.

I am endeavouring to find out why this is so.