Databases AWS

SQL Server 2022 on AWS User Guide

| Product: SQL Server 2022

Overview

This Marketplace listing is a single product that ships five Microsoft SQL Server 2022 delivery options, all on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. You pick the edition that matches your workload and licensing when you launch. Each edition has its own focused deployment guide -- choose your edition in the table below and open it.

SQL Server 2022 is the enterprise relational database platform for mission-critical workloads, analytics and high availability. Every edition is installed from the official Microsoft APT repository, ships with mssql-tools18 and sqlcmd, runs on port 1433, stores its data on a dedicated, independently resizable EBS volume at /var/opt/mssql, and generates unique per-instance credentials on first boot. The images are headless -- you administer SQL Server over SSH with sqlcmd and any compatible client. The SSH login user is ubuntu on every edition.

Select Your Edition

# Edition Licensing Best for Key limits Guide
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 24 cores, 128 GB buffer pool Open guide →
3 Web Paid, low-cost (evaluation until a product key is applied) Public web-facing applications and hosting 16 cores, 64 GB; web-facing use only Open guide →
4 Express Free Small databases, prototypes, learning 10 GB max database, ~1.4 GB buffer pool Open guide →
5 Developer Free (development and test use only) Dev/test with the full Enterprise feature set Not licensed for production Open guide →

Which Edition Should I Choose?

Production, paid. Enterprise unlocks the complete feature set with no edition limits beyond your hardware -- multi-replica Always On, in-memory OLTP, columnstore and TDE -- for mission-critical scale. Standard delivers the core engine for mid-tier production, capped at 24 cores and 128 GB of buffer-pool memory with basic single-secondary Always On. Web is a lower-cost edition licensed specifically for public, internet-facing web applications and hosting, with a reduced feature set and a 16-core / 64 GB ceiling. All three install with evaluation licensing; apply a 25-character product key to license for production.

Free. Express is the free entry-level engine for small databases (10 GB maximum), prototypes and learning; no product key, no backup compression. Developer is identical to Enterprise in features and also free, but licensed strictly for development and test use only -- never in production.

SQL Server 2022 features available across the paid editions (and in full on Developer): Ledger for tamper-evident tables, Query Store on by default, intelligent query processing enhancements including parameter-sensitive plan optimization, and contained availability groups.

What Every Edition Has in Common

  • Ubuntu 22.04 LTS base image with mssql-server, mssql-tools18 and sqlcmd from the official Microsoft APT repository.
  • Dedicated data volume -- SQL Server data and log files live on their own gp3 EBS volume at /var/opt/mssql, separate from the OS disk and independently resizable.
  • No shared credentials -- a one-shot firstboot service generates a unique SA password and a cloudimg SQL login on every instance, writing them to /root/mssql-credentials.txt (mode 0600). Two instances never share credentials.
  • SQL Server on port 1433, started on boot via systemd. Open 1433 only to trusted networks.
  • SSH login user ubuntu on every edition.
  • cloudimg 24/7 support for deployment, edition selection, high availability, tuning and administration.

The detailed launch, connection, data-volume, backup and licensing steps -- which differ by edition -- are in each edition's own guide linked above.

Prerequisites

  • 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
  • A VPC and subnet with a security group allowing inbound port 22 (and port 1433 from trusted networks for direct client access)
  • The AWS CLI (version 2) installed locally for command-line deployment

Support

cloudimg provides 24/7 expert technical support for these images. Contact support@cloudimg.co.uk for help with SQL Server deployment, edition selection, performance tuning, high availability and administration.

For SQL Server feature and edition reference, see the official Microsoft SQL Server 2022 editions documentation.

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