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3 Replies Last post: Oct 1, 2009 8:25 PM by petedr  

Oracle "Capacity On Demand" and vSphere Essentials posted: Aug 10, 2009 7:23 AM

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J1mbo
585 posts since
May 20, 2009

Afternoon all

Obviously this comes up all the time, but I wanted to focus in specifically on the part of the Oracle license model below when operating vmware vSphere Essentials (or plus) licensing:

Oracle recognizes a trend in the industry to pay for server usage based on the number of CPUs that are actually turned on - the "Capacity on Demand," or "Pay as You Grow" models. In keeping with the changes in the hardware industry and the way customers pay for services, we allow customers to license only the number of CPUs that are turned on to run Oracle.

When looking at an Oracle per-CPU license, the Essentials vm license restriction of 4 vCPUs surely must meet that crieria "to license only the number of CPUs that are turned on to run Oracle", i.e. 4, but conversly immediately preclude the use of Oracle Standard One edition?

Any thoughts or experience with this?

Many thanks!

Re: Oracle "Capacity On Demand" and vSphere Essentials

1. Sep 28, 2009 3:50 AM in response to: J1mbo
Click to view J1mbo's profile Expert
J1mbo
585 posts since
May 20, 2009

With regard to the above, the short answer is no. Oracle still insist that every CPU processor/core/die (as appropriate!) is licensed since they specifically class ESX(i) as soft partitioning. But there is some good news.

Standard One and Standard editions are licensed on a per-socket basis (up to 2 or 4 respectively) but with a horrid caveat,

When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One or Standard Edition in the product name, a processor is counted equivalent to a socket; however, in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket.


Although no proper definition of 'multi-chip modules' is given, the Intel Xeon 55xx series quad cores are on a single physical die, so one would presume that these cannot be multi-chip modules, unlike the older Core-2 based chips.

Net result - Standard One or Standard should be good to virtualise on dual 55xx systems like Dell R610's without further licensing issues - awaiting confirmation from Oracle on this....

Thanks

Re: Oracle "Capacity On Demand" and vSphere Essentials

2. Sep 29, 2009 8:17 PM in response to: J1mbo
Click to view petedr's profile Master
petedr
1,408 posts since
Mar 18, 2006

Thought virtualization.info had a good point about Oracle and virtulization and how they can be serious if they still have issues with their licensing and supporting Virtual Machines.

http://www.virtualization.info/2009/09/how-much-credibility-oracle-has-as.html

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress

Re: Oracle "Capacity On Demand" and vSphere Essentials

3. Oct 1, 2009 8:25 PM in response to: petedr
Click to view petedr's profile Master
petedr
1,408 posts since
Mar 18, 2006

Just saw this Oracle response on their credibility in virtualization

http://www.virtualization.info/2009/10/oracle-answers-to-virtualizationinfo-on.html


www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress

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