SharePoint Server 2013, something you need to know
About License Type
There are 2 license types of SharePoint 2013: Server License and Client Access License (CAL)
Server License
There are 2 types: SharePoint 2013 Server (standard) and SharePoint 2013 Server Enterprise (Enterprise).
You can refer to this link for more information about features between 2 versions:
Server licenses are required for all servers that install SharePoint 2013 Software. For example, if you plan to build a farm with 2 Web Front End servers and 2 Application Servers, you will need 4 server licenses.
Notes:
1. If you download SharePoint Server 2013 Evaluation from Microsoft Tech-net, it will be SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise.
2. If you have a farm with SharePoint 2013 Server Enterprise installed, you can not add a new server with SharePoint 2013 Evaluation or Standard to the farm. And also a farm with SharePoint 2013 Standard, you can not add SharePoint 2013 Enterprise or Evaluation.
In short, a farm must be Standard to Standard, Enterprise to Enterprise.
To detect which SharePoint Server license is installed on a server, please refer:
CAL License
CAL licenses are required for users to use some Enterprise features of SharePoint 2013.
There are also 2 types: Standard CAL and Enterprise CAL. Enterprise CAL does include Standard CAL. For example: If you buy 100 Enterprise CALs, you will need to buy 100 Standard CALs and 100 Enterprise CALs.
About SharePoint 2013 Search
After you successfully installed SharePoint Server 2013 and run Product Configuration Wizard, you can create a Search Service Application (SSA) by checking the box "SharePoint Server Search" service. However, in SharePoint 2013, you can not customize the SSA via GUI, you can only do this via Management Shell.There are various articles from the internet that will guide you through how to create a customized SSA by using Power Shell. However, you should firstly have a plan for your search architecture. This article will help you to have a complete overview:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn342836.aspx
Then, you should understand all the search components. This blog is one that I found very helpful:
https://www.spdockit.com/blog/sharepoint-2013-search-topologies-explained/
After you have enough these above information, you can start to create your own SSA.
Something to remember:
1. A farm can have more than one SSA, not only one. However, it is not true that the more SSA you have, the faster the users search.
2. If you plan to move SSA databases from SQL Enterprise to SQL Standard server, you need firstly disable all tables and indexes in the databases with data compression features.
3. Do not think that only backing up the search databases can help you to restore the SSA. SSA can only be backup/restore with Backup/Restore section in SharePoint Central Administration or using Data Protection Manager (DPM) application.
