Oracle database licensing – Overview-3

 

Environment:

Our environment has both physical and virtual servers running on Linux OS and AIX. VMware ESXi used as virtualization OS.

I initiated the communication with the oracle account manager, who sent me 2 scripts which collects all the details of the system. Depends on the installation edition they will send you the prices and support cost. If possible, negotiate for the discount, in our case we got a good discount then send PO, approval etc.

The following sections I will plain the way of oracle licensing calculations.

Edition:

Oracle has 5 different editions,

Oracle Database Standard Edition One:

It is an affordable database version; Oracle Database Standard Edition One includes all the facilities necessary to build business-critical applications. It is basically for smaller environments and not supports high availability and can be used up to two sockets.

Oracle Database Standard Edition:

Same as standard one, but it can support real application cluster and can be used up to four sockets.

Oracle Database Enterprise Edition:

Oracle Database Enterprise Edition contains all of the components of Oracle Database; this edition is the correct choice for high volume databases. This can be further enhanced with the purchase of optional packs such as partitioning, compression.

Oracle Database Express Edition :

This is an entry-level and free of cost. As like others it comes with certain restrictions, can store up to 4GB of user data, use up to 1GB of memory, and use one CPU on the host machine. The support will be provided through the forum.

Oracle Database Personal Edition:

This edition of an Oracle Database is designed for developers; this comes with all the option which has an enterprise edition except real application cluster. Personal Edition is available on Windows platforms only.

For further differences between various database editions, refer oracle official document.

Database licensing:

Oracle database can be license using two metrics

1. Named user plus
2. Processor

The Named User Plus metric counts number of users. The user includes servers, clients, application users, devices etc.

The processor metrics calculated from physical core. 

We will see this in details.

You can choose any one of these metrics for licensing your database, in some scenario NUP licensing will be expensive than processor licensing in this case you can choose processor licensing.  

I have used both NUP and processor metrics (to reduce cost) to calculate the licensing for a single project.

Ensure the following before you choose NUP:

• Standard Edition One can only be licensed on servers that have a maximum capacity of 2 sockets. It requires a minimum of 5 Named User Plus licenses or the total number of actual users, whichever is greater.
• Standard Edition can only be licensed on servers that have a maximum capacity of 4 sockets or on a cluster of machines supporting up to a maximum of four processors per cluster.  It requires a minimum of 5 Named User Plus licenses or the total number of actual users, whichever is greater.
• The Enterprise Edition requires a minimum of 25 Named User Plus per Processor licenses or the total number of actual users, whichever is greater. Imagine if you have 12 core machine you should license minimum 300 (25*12) NUP license per machine.
• 1 named user plus per database license for the personal edition.

Processor Metrics:

Before we begun, let’s have a look about processor hardware terminology.

Socket:

CPU slot or socket accommodates CPU packs in a main board. Refer the image, it has 4 sockets.

CPU core:

The core is a program execution and capable of doing the processing. Multi-core CPUs have multiple execution cores on the single piece CPU.

These days most of the processors are of multi-core capability. This means a single physical processor can do multi execution.

In our case we have dual sockets and 6 cores for Intel machines, dual sockets and four cores for power machines.

Processor metrics calculation:

Oracle’s processor based licensing is based on number of CPU cores. Oracle has a predefined core processor licensing factor which you can use for your platform. For more information click here

Let’s see some examples.

Intel:

We had 2 socket and 6 core machines, so the licensing calculation as follows

2 (socket) X core (6) = 12

12 X 0.5 (core processor licensing factor for Intel) = 6 unit to be licensed.

Power:

We had 2 sockets and 4 core machines, so the licensing calculation as follows

2 (socket) X core (4) = 8

8 X 1 (core processor licensing factor for Power) = 8 unit to be licensed.

VMware:

There are two types of virtualization environment, soft partitioning and hard partitioning.

In soft-partitioning, CPU capacity can be changed at run time if additional CPU is needed. 

This is a flexible way of managing resources. 

In hard-partitioning, a physical server is separated into distinct smaller systems, each with its own CPU’s. 

Oracle licensing for soft partitioning should be licensed for entire CPU, for soft partitioning should be licensed for allocating CPU.

VMware is under soft partitioning, let’s have an example. 

A physical server has 24 cores with VMware Esxi installed and only 6 cores allocated for database server, but it should be licensed for 24 cores.

Oracle Virtual box is under hard partitioning category.