This thread is archived
10 Replies
Last post:
Jun 4, 2004 2:15 PM by
roluje
After reading the pdf on oracle's site, it appears to depend on if VMware is considered "hard partioning" or "soft partioning". This post is my interpretation after reading the pdf and speaking or our oracle contact and is NOT intended to be a statement of fact.
By comparision to their listed examples, VMware should be considered hard partioning as an OS/Oracle instance cannot run on more than the assigned CPU(s). The pdf describes hard partioning as "Each separated system acts as a physically independent, self-contained server, typically with its own CPUs, operating system, separate boot area, memory, input/output subsystem and network resources." and this is a classic view of a VMware world.
Therefore oracle would be licensed for 1 or 2 vCPUs as described in the pdf "we allow customers to license only the number of CPUs that are turned on to run Oracle."
Where this starts to get expensive is if you run 5 SMP VMs with oracle on a 4 way physical server, you end up paying for 10 cpu licenses on a 4 physical cpu server. This probably would not be the best practice anyway. Conversely, if you run one SMP VM with oracle on a 8 way server, you'd pay for 2 oracle cpu licenses and not 8.
Again, this is just my interpretation based on existing supplied information and is subject to change without notice.
By comparision to their listed examples, VMware should be considered hard partioning as an OS/Oracle instance cannot run on more than the assigned CPU(s). The pdf describes hard partioning as "Each separated system acts as a physically independent, self-contained server, typically with its own CPUs, operating system, separate boot area, memory, input/output subsystem and network resources." and this is a classic view of a VMware world.
Therefore oracle would be licensed for 1 or 2 vCPUs as described in the pdf "we allow customers to license only the number of CPUs that are turned on to run Oracle."
Where this starts to get expensive is if you run 5 SMP VMs with oracle on a 4 way physical server, you end up paying for 10 cpu licenses on a 4 physical cpu server. This probably would not be the best practice anyway. Conversely, if you run one SMP VM with oracle on a 8 way server, you'd pay for 2 oracle cpu licenses and not 8.
Again, this is just my interpretation based on existing supplied information and is subject to change without notice.
Why dont you consolidate your databases ?
Have you run into compability hell with oracle versions ?
- Anders
Have you run into compability hell with oracle versions ?
- Anders
Thank you for your response, since you emailed oracle directly this must their current stance. the following is for the sake of conversation and will basically be a discussion point with our oracle rep if we ever start running oracle on intel or in a VM.
So by your response, if we had an x445 8way and we created one single CPU'd VM and installed oracle, we would need 8 CPUs worth of licensing??? this seems like robery. As previously stated we do not currently run Oracle on Intel systems but we are looking into running Oracle on Linux/Intel and maybe in a VM.
My understanding is that the entire encapsulated single CPU VM world is constrained to run on a single processor at a time. I further understand that a world can be moved from a CPU to another CPU as the system load changes but that world (containing the oracle processes)is still only capable of running on 1 physical processor at a time. Does anyone know what ESX processes would perform operations on behalf of the VM that would be running on other CPUs? If we had an external server running similar processes (maybe like patrol monitor or something) that "performed operations on behalf of the ... machine running oracle" like restarting services, running scripts, did health monitoring, would we need to include those CPUs in the license count as well?
I have some limited experience with IBM P650s running AIX in an LPAR configuration. I know this is quite differnt but whenever you restart an LPAR there is NO guarantee that it will get the same physical CPU, so an single CPU assigned LPAR can also be run on any CPU in the system (although it can only change CPU's during a restart of the LPAR). With the upcoming AIX 5.3 and Power5 CPUs, if we had 0.4 processor assigned to an LPAR can we get Oracle license for 0.4 CPU? I bet probably not.
I tend to equate ESX to the Hypervisor function. ESX is software, Hypervisor is firmware. The hypervisor "performs operations on behalf of the" LPAR (primarily during startup) and it has access to all CPUs in the system as well. Can these be somewhat equated? As I previously quoted, Oracle's own white paper describes hard partioning and every piece of their desciption perfectly describes ESX. Their definition of soft partioning perfectly describes work load managemnt products and does NOT describe ESX. Maybe at worst ESX is somewhere in the middle?
I believe this may be just about as clear as mud for me right now.
Thank you for letting me carry on about this. IF we did a VM with Oracle and they wanted 8 CPUs of license for it, this topic may become a personal peve of mine.
So by your response, if we had an x445 8way and we created one single CPU'd VM and installed oracle, we would need 8 CPUs worth of licensing??? this seems like robery
. As previously stated we do not currently run Oracle on Intel systems but we are looking into running Oracle on Linux/Intel and maybe in a VM.My understanding is that the entire encapsulated single CPU VM world is constrained to run on a single processor at a time. I further understand that a world can be moved from a CPU to another CPU as the system load changes but that world (containing the oracle processes)is still only capable of running on 1 physical processor at a time. Does anyone know what ESX processes would perform operations on behalf of the VM that would be running on other CPUs? If we had an external server running similar processes (maybe like patrol monitor or something) that "performed operations on behalf of the ... machine running oracle" like restarting services, running scripts, did health monitoring, would we need to include those CPUs in the license count as well?
I have some limited experience with IBM P650s running AIX in an LPAR configuration. I know this is quite differnt but whenever you restart an LPAR there is NO guarantee that it will get the same physical CPU, so an single CPU assigned LPAR can also be run on any CPU in the system (although it can only change CPU's during a restart of the LPAR). With the upcoming AIX 5.3 and Power5 CPUs, if we had 0.4 processor assigned to an LPAR can we get Oracle license for 0.4 CPU? I bet probably not.
I tend to equate ESX to the Hypervisor function. ESX is software, Hypervisor is firmware. The hypervisor "performs operations on behalf of the" LPAR (primarily during startup) and it has access to all CPUs in the system as well. Can these be somewhat equated? As I previously quoted, Oracle's own white paper describes hard partioning and every piece of their desciption perfectly describes ESX. Their definition of soft partioning perfectly describes work load managemnt products and does NOT describe ESX. Maybe at worst ESX is somewhere in the middle?
I believe this may be just about as clear as mud for me right now.
Thank you for letting me carry on about this. IF we did a VM with Oracle and they wanted 8 CPUs of license for it, this topic may become a personal peve of mine
.