VMware Cloud Community
mahaboobdeen
Contributor
Contributor
‎01-12-2021 10:52 PM

Running Oracle on VMware with HP hardware CPU core disabled

I have a query related to oracle licensing on VMware platform. The query is running Oracle VM on esxi host with 2 host cluster by disabling the physical cores does the oracle licenses should be taken only for active cores or do we need to licenses for entire CPU. Kindly advise.

Reply
0 Kudos
5 Replies
Lalegre
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎01-13-2021 12:10 AM

Hey @mahaboobdeen,

As recommended in VMware papers if you do not want to license the whole cluster or not even the whole host, you can use vSphere CPU Affinity as shown here: https://www.licensefortress.com/blog/2017/10/24/vmware-cpu-affinity-scheduler-operation#:~:text=CPU%....

Also please take a look at the next VMware official paper: https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/whitepaper/solutions/oracle/unders...

Lastly here is the way of configuring the CPU Affinity: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.resmgmt.doc/GUID-F40F901D-C1A7-43E2...

Reply
0 Kudos
mahaboobdeen
Contributor
Contributor
‎01-13-2021 12:59 AM

Thanks for your response. In our scenario, on total 12 cores * 2  we have disabled 6 cores on both socket in BIOS, further on cluster we have set affinity rule to run the oracle VM's on the same host which was licensed. Could you please clarify if the oracle licenses we have for 6 cores is that complaint?

Reply
0 Kudos
Lalegre
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎01-13-2021 05:11 AM

Yes you are in compliance as you can see in the document:

Lalegre_0-1610543464563.png

That screenshot is from the second document and you do not need to disable from BIOS as you could use it for another workloads. You just need to use the vSphere CPU Affinity.

Reply
0 Kudos
mahaboobdeen
Contributor
Contributor
‎01-13-2021 10:31 AM

@Lalegre 

Thanks for your comments. Please note that we have dedicated the entire physcial host for oracle VM workload, there is no other workload. Therefore, we went ahead and disabled the CPU cores from 12 cores to 6 cores on each socket in bios. Further, we created VM affinity rule for Oracle VMs to run only on that 6*2 cores server. In this scenario are we complaint by having 6 cores oracle licenses.

Please advice.

Reply
0 Kudos
Lalegre
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎01-13-2021 11:41 PM

Hey @mahaboobdeen,

Yes in that case you are in compliant.

Reply
0 Kudos