Bring Your Own License
- What it is
- Using software licenses you already own (Windows Server, SQL Server, Oracle, SAP) on AWS instead of paying an AWS hourly rate with the license included.
- The two licensing models to compare
- License Included — the license cost is bundled into the instance’s hourly price. Simple, no compliance risk, no upfront purchase. Elastic — stop paying when you stop the instance.
- BYOL — cheaper if the license is already paid for and not fully consumed, but you carry compliance responsibility and it is a sunk fixed cost.
- The infrastructure requirement
- Many enterprise licenses are bound to physical sockets or cores, so they require Dedicated Hosts — the only option giving visibility into and affinity with the physical server.
- Dedicated Instances do not work for socket-bound licensing: no host visibility, and the instance can move hosts.
- Tooling
- AWS License Manager tracks entitlements and blocks launches that would breach the license terms.