For years, SQL Server consolidation has been a widely used strategy. As servers have become more powerful, they can handle more services on a single piece of hardware. With the introduction of multi-core processors a few years ago, servers with the same number of physical CPUs can handle even more work without increasing the licensing requirements. The latest version of Microsoft SQL Server is unchanged from a consolidation point of view—techniques remain basically the same in SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008.