SQL Server 2025

Select your edition

1 Enterprise Paid (evaluation until a product key is applied) Mission-critical production at scale None beyond OS/hardware Open guide

2 Standard Paid (evaluation until a product key is applied) Mid-tier production workloads 4 sockets / 32 cores, 256 GB buffer pool Open guide

3 Express Free Small databases, prototypes, learning 10 GB max database, ~1.4 GB buffer pool Open guide

4 Developer Free (development and test use only) Dev/test with the full Enterprise feature set Not licensed for production Open guide

• SQL Server 2025 Enterprise: the complete feature set for mission-critical scale. It includes multi-replica Always On Availability Groups, in-memory OLTP, advanced compression, partitioning and Always Encrypted.
• SQL Server 2025 Standard: the core relational engine for mid-tier production, within the 4-socket / 32-core and 256 GB buffer-pool limits.
• SQL Server 2025 Express: the free entry-level edition for small databases (10 GB max), prototypes and learning.
• SQL Server 2025 Developer: the full Enterprise feature set, free for development and test use only (not for production).

Which edition should I choose?

Production, paid: Enterprise or Standard. Enterprise unlocks the complete SQL Server feature set, with no edition-imposed limits beyond your OS and hardware. It includes multi-replica Always On Availability Groups, in-memory OLTP, unlimited cores and RAM, advanced compression and Always Encrypted, for mission-critical workloads at scale.

Standard delivers the core relational engine and the new 2025 engine features for mid-tier production. It is capped at the lesser of 4 sockets or 32 cores and 256 GB of buffer-pool memory, with basic single-secondary Always On availability.

Both editions install with evaluation licensing. Apply a 25-character product key to license them for production.

Free: Express or Developer. Express is the free entry-level engine for small databases (10 GB maximum), prototypes, learning and lightweight applications. It has no product key and no backup compression.

Developer has the same features as Enterprise and is also free, but it is licensed strictly for development and test use only. Never run it in production.

New 2025 engine features are available across the paid editions and in full on Developer. They include the vector data type and HNSW indexes for AI and RAG workloads, native JSON_OBJECT and JSON_ARRAY functions, REGEXP_LIKE / REGEXP_INSTR / REGEXP_REPLACE in T-SQL, and optimized locking for improved concurrency.

Note: Microsoft retired the Web edition in SQL Server 2025, so it is not offered. Microsoft directs former Web-edition customers to Standard edition.

What every edition has in common

Every edition shares the same operational setup, so the launch and access steps are the same:

• Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base image, with mssql-server, mssql-tools18 and sqlcmd from the official Microsoft APT repository.
• No shared credentials. On the first boot of every instance, a one-shot firstboot service generates a strong random SA password and a dedicated SecureAnyCloud SQL login. It applies them inside the running engine, removes the build-time memory cap, and writes the credentials to /root/mssql-credentials.txt with mode 0600, so only root can read them. Two instances launched from the same image never share credentials.
• SQL Server on port 1433, started on boot through systemd. Open 1433 in your security group only to the trusted networks that need direct client access. Never open it to the public internet.
• SSH login user ubuntu on every edition.
• SecureAnyCloud 24/7 support for deployment, edition selection, performance tuning, high availability and database administration.

The launch, connection, management, backup and licensing steps differ by edition. They are in each edition's own guide, linked above.

Prerequisites

Before you deploy any edition, make sure you have:

• An Amazon Web Services account where you can launch EC2 instances
• IAM permissions to launch instances, create security groups and subscribe to AWS Marketplace products
• An EC2 key pair in the target Region for SSH access to the instance
• A VPC and subnet in the target Region, with a security group that allows inbound port 22 from your management network (and port 1433 from trusted networks for direct client access)
• The AWS CLI (version 2) installed locally, if you plan to deploy from the command line

Support

SecureAnyCloud provides 24/7 expert technical support for these images. Contact sales@secureanycloud.com for help with SQL Server deployment, edition selection, performance tuning, high availability, query optimization and database administration.

For SQL Server feature and edition reference, see the official Microsoft SQL Server 2025 editions documentation.

All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.

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