Oracle Database Discussions

johnpau2013 wrote:

All questions regarding Oracle licenses should be directed to your local Oracle sales person.

I believe the answer is "as many as you want, but you need to understand that Oracle assumes it is the only instance each time."  Read all licensing docs carefully for your configuration.

https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/whitepaper/solutions/oracle/understanding_oracle_certi…

Oracle licenses is usually per core, with single processor you mean 1 Core processor?

Regards

Evgeni.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Core based licensing applies to only Enterprise edition.

I'm discussing about Standard Edition Two(SE2).   And I'm not sure if the core factor licensing applies to SE2 or not.

SE2 has the following limitations:

  1) underlying host server cannot have more than 2 physical processors (without any cores limit)

  2) the database instance is limited to 16 CPUs   ( so in case of virtual machine, the cap for vCPU is 16, this cap is setup by database automatically, which is good)

From Oracle's own documentation of SE2 at

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/oracle-db-se2-brief-2680836.pdf

" Multiple SE2 databases can be run on a single server to fully utilize the server CPU capacity."

IMHO, On VMware you would need to license all CPU's available on the VMware ESX Server/s.
I would suggest to contact oracle for precise answer.
And may use of one physical host with one CPU would be much more "safer" from license perspective.

Evgeni

IMHO, On VMware you would need to license all CPU's available on the VMware  ESX Server/s.

And that would be Oracle's position as well. Not only that, but if you run Oracle on ESXi 6 or higher, you not only need to license all CPUs on your VMWare cluster, you need to license all CPUs on *all* clusters in your enterprise.

Cheers,
Brian

Hi,

With one SE2 processor license, you can run on a one-socket server (no core factor here as you don't count cores)  as many VMs and you want and as many instances as you want and as many users as you want.

Not that you don't need to isolate them in VMs. You can also run all instances in the same OS if you want, thanks to instance caging (which cages by default to 16 threads but you can reduce it).

Regards,

Franck.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Ok - you're wrong.

The answer to your question about 'how many' is: whatever number Oracle tells you.

If you don't really plan to abide by the licensing agreement then just do whatever you want.

If you DO PLAN to abide by the agreement then go by whatever info Oracle gives you.

Either way it doesn't really matter what anyone else says.

I can't say that "consistency" is an attribute of Oracle.

I can't say that "consistency" is an attribute of Oracle.

I really don't see that as relevant. If Oracle gives you a number and you base things on that number Oracle can't very well claim you are not in compliance.

That doesn't apply if you use a number that someone in a forum gives you.

Agreed. There are 2 type of clusters licensing. Fully and Partial cluster licensing. Partial is limiting by DRS Host Affinity rules to prevent Oracle instance to move to another host. Just an additional point, that if Johnpau2013 have large environment, it may worth to consult with House of Brick.

They can, do and have changed their minds.  Until you get it in writing, it doesn't exist, and even then may change.

It can be worse with 3rd parties involved.

It can be much worse with lawyers involved.

1) Unlimited users can connect to the database. correct. ?

Yes, note that user is either any person or device but the correct response is unlimited. Refer to processor definition in: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/databaselicensing-070584.pdf

2) Any limit on how many database instances can we install on a single processor if we buy processor based license.?   Example:-  We buy one processor based Oracle database license. And lets say we use VMware as hypervisor to virtualize the host server.  If we install 5 windows guest VMs on this host server. Can we install 5 separate Oracle database instances ? Or is the processor based licensed only entitled to install one Oracle database instance.

There are no limit because you buy the license for the processor installed. You can install N-Vmware machines and you can have one database per Vmware machine created. When you user Vmware be careful buying the license according to the processors installed physically in this case if your server has one physical processor you should buy one oracle license for that processor. Other thing you should be careful is the edition of oracle database when you buy Enterprise Edition you should refer to the conversion table in order you are properly licensed. Refer to: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/contracts/processor-core-factor-table-070634.pdf

:-)

Paola