HA (Physical Vs Virtual) & Licensing requirement

Hello Gentlemen,

In my organization, a new project (payment gateway) is coming up, for which the vendor (project consultant) has recommended the following server requirement and architecture:

1. Two Physical Servers for Front End Web Application (specs: 1S,4C cpu, 8gb, 300gb, 2 nics)
2. Two Physical Servers for Middleware (Microsoft Biztalk 2013) (specs: 1S,4C cpu, 8gb, 300gb, 2 nics)

The above two server's would be Network Load Balanced

1. Two physical servers for SQL Database (failover: active / passive) (specs: 2S,6C cpu, 32gb, 300gb, 2 nics)

Kindly clarify the followings:

1. If i go virtual then i would need
   • One Front End Web Application Server
   • One Middleware Server and
   • One SQL DB

With HA feature of virtualization one server each would be sufficient right?

2. With SQL 2012, since M$ has changed licensing to per core, if am going physical SQL (active/passive) then we need to buy 6 packs of 2 core each SQLlicense

• Why would a SQL server need 12 core requirement, from my experience i noticed SQL servers are memory intensive app, not processor intensive, still i think 12 core is too much

thanks

best regards

Nawaz