Oracle licensing in a Vmware Cluster

[givcat]

My question is related with Oracle licensing in a Vmware Cluster.

We have two VMware cluster in our datacenter:  the first one (8 hosts – 16 sockets) is for not Oracle VM and the second (2 host – 3 sockets) only for Oracle VM. Both are connected to the same IBM V7000 with zoning and LUN masking that guarantees isolation.

In the Oracle cluster, DRS and HA are deactivated and VMotion logs are monitored for license compliance.

In this isolated environment, Oracle pretend to license every socket to any host connected to the V7000, regardless of the cluster that are connected the host.

Do you know how similar implementations with Oracle have been resolved (in terms of licensing)?

Thanks in advance!

[schepp]

Hi,

yes I have heard this from several people and it was also the topic of a workshop on the annual german oracle uer group meeting.

For your environment, oracle was even kind. As you can vMotion VMs even without shared storage since vSphere 5.1, they tend to say you have to license every host in your vCenter for their software, even if they are not connected to the same storage.

When vMotion will be available across different vCenters I expect Oracle to even says you have to license every single ESXi host you have world wide in any datacenter.

I think this kind of licensing is really **** and we are reacting by removing any oracle product we can. What is also almost criminal is the fact, that Oracle's own virtualization has way better licensing rules than VMware.

Tim

[jhannan]

I think this might help, my CTO wrote it:

http://houseofbrick.com/oracle-licensing-soft-partitioning-on-vmware-is-your-contractual-right-2/

[MKguy]

Definitely a useful article. Also useful is this one:

http://houseofbrick.com/managing-oracle-licensing-in-a-shared-storage-environment/

And the various Oracle licensing-related articles written by Michael Webster:

http://longwhiteclouds.com/tag/oracle/

http://longwhiteclouds.com/tag/licensing/

To me personally it boils down to the very simple contractual key element:

By contract, you have to license every physical processor of every physical server where Oracle was/is running (whether that was as a VM or physical is irrelevant).

Conversely this means that by contract, you don't have to pay a penny for any physical server that never ever had Oracle software running on itself, period.

It's amazing how Oracle reps can keep ****ing with their customers like this.

[SBALASUBRAMANIA]

Support and Licensing Guide link

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vmw-understanding-oracle-certification-supportlicensing-en...

https://www.vmware.com/support/policies/oracle-support

http://www.vmware.com/business-critical-apps/

Oracle Licensing Discussion – The Definitive Collateral Collection-   

1. 1. Oracle Licensing Webinar Recording – Links to the webinar and corresponding introduction article
2. a.            http://www.dbta.com/Webinars/722-Straight-Talk-on-Oracle-on-VMware-Licensing.htm  
3. b. http://www.dbta.com/Editorial/News-Flashes/Listening-to-Straight-Talk-on-Oracle-on-VMware-Licensing-...

1. 2.            Updated Understanding Oracle Licensing, Certification and Support on VMware guide -

                http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/oracle/Understanding_Oracle_Certification_Support_Licensin...

1. 3.            List of the Oracle licensing consulting partners:
2. a. License Consulting - http://www.licenseconsulting.eu/   (Daniel Hasselink)
3. b. House of Brick - http://houseofbrick.com/   (Dave Welch)

1. 4. IOUG Oracle Virtualization Platform decision Survey report - http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/oracle/VMware-The-Empowered-Database-2014-IOUG-Platform-De...  

  5. IOUG VMware Special Interests group(SIG) sign up - http://www.ioug.org/vmware