How many cores and license do I really need

We are getting ready to launch our B2B site. We will be hosting it ourselves. There will be three primary components, the web server (host all content and descriptions), a jaguar server and the ERP server & database. Prophet21 (Epicor) is our ERP system and currently host our B2B. We're moving internally primarily due to response time.

Our web developer is recommending 8 cores for the webserver. Epicor says 2 cores is enough. As you probably know, SQL is licensed by the core or by the user. Going by the core, it's going to cost approximately $7K (2 core) or $35K (8 core). Given this is a web server, I'm thinking core license is the best way to go as I don't have to worry about not having enough user license when traffic picks up. My thought is 8 core is overkill, at least initially. CPU speed, memory and disk space is not as issue as we have recently refreshed our hosts and array. This is a VM environment so I can easily allocate additional resources on the fly. Thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks

 

SQL license is on core basis. For every 2 CPU core, one SQL license is required. While dealing with the Microsoft vendors, they always use the term CPU core for calculating the number of required SQL license.

 

That is the nice thing about going with a VPS server. You can always start smaller and test out. If things seem to be running slower than you want then add more cores and ram.

That is what I would recommend doing if it was me doing the project.