title: SQL Server 2012 Enterprise vs Standard - use of partitioning?
body: <p>I have been developing against SQL Server 2012 Enterprise, and came to migrate to production, where I found our hosting provider had installed Standard. I didn't think it should be a problem, as I hadn't implemented any enterprise specific features. However when I restored the DB it failed to activate, and in the Event Log, I found a message indicating the database couldn't be activated because it contained features not supported by the version. When I dug deeper, I found that it appeared that FTS or some other function had automatically created 5 partition functions and schemes. </p>
  
  <p>I then went through a time consuming process to remove the partitions functions and schemes, and could successfully restore the database on the Standard edition. </p>
  
  <p>After a while I backed up the DB (with no PFs or PSs), transferred it to my dev env, restored it (on SQL Enterprise), and after some time I found that a single partition function and scheme had been created. When I next came to backup and restore to prod, this time the database activated ok without error - even though there were partition functions and schemes.</p>
  
  <p>I have just run the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT feature_name FROM sys.dm_db_persisted_sku_features ;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>from here</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc280724.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc280724.aspx</a></p>
  
  <p>and found that for the db with 5 partitions functions/schemes, Partitioning is listed as a version specific feature. When running the same against the db with 1 function/scheme, it's not listed. </p>
  
  <p>Is there something going on here that Auto created, FTS related partition schemes are ok on standard edition, but not manually created/other types? (keep in mind I never manually implemented partitioning)</p>