Oracle licensing on VMware, Cloud, Hyper V and other virtualised platforms

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www.onomi.co.uk
Do’s and Don’ts of
Oracle licensing
in a virtualised
world
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info@onomi.co.uk
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Free White Paper
 Please note that a 15-page white paper by the presenter will be provided
to attendees of today’s session.
 This discusses more fully all the thought processes behind the topic and
provides relevant sources for the information
Note : all the principles I discuss in these materials reflects the generic position.
Everything in life is negotiable, including Oracle contracts, for those with enough
influence.

The evolution of deployment architecture
Keeping an eye on Oracle’s commercial interpretation
Physically-
managed server
Bare metal + native O/S
Multiple cpus gradually evolved into
highly-scalable Symmetric Multi-Processor
architectures
For many years cpus were single core.

Physically-
managed server
Hardware
Partitioning
Native O/S + rigidly ring-fenced set of cpu resources.
Later developed migration features
Framework for managing resources.
Oracle recognises specific technologies
as “hardware partitioning”. Debating the
meaning is futile : these are Oracle’s rules.
Later developed migration features.
Oracle has not accepted these as compliant
with their partitioning doctrine for licensing

Physically-
managed server
Hardware
Partitioning
Virtualised
Clusters
Hypervisor with multiple, varied
O/S instances and live migration
It would be unwise to make the
general assumption that a virtual
machine can be a hardware partition
for Oracle licensing

Physically-
managed server
Hardware
Partitioning
Virtualised
Clusters
Cloud Abstraction rather than new
technique, lots of variety
We’ll explore types of
Cloud later

Physically-
managed server
Hardware
Partitioning
Virtualised
Clusters
Cloud Abstraction rather than new
technique, lots of variety
Don’t assume that the older models are now irrelevant, far from it !

Licensable Environment
 A term I created to clarify how Oracle’s licensing rules play out
in the real world, and how you should approach measuring compliance
 The valid choices are simply these :-
o The whole of a physically-managed server in the good old-fashioned way
o An approved regime of hardware partitioning.
(NB on x86 kit, the only candidates are OVM for x86 (without live migration)
or Solaris x86 running natively with capped Containers
o The whole of a virtualised cluster**
 Generally all the above are considered equal in licensing, and many rules
apply to all of them. This has some unforeseen outcomes.

** Oracle has started to expand licensing scope for VMWare post vCenter 5.1.
If one instance of vCenter manages multiple clusters, Oracle will say they
are all potential migration targets and must be licensed.

Licence Metrics
 The vast majority of Oracle Technology products offer a choice of Processor or
Named User Plus metrics
 Virtualisation and Cloud have not generated new metrics, and bearing in mind the
Licensable Environment concept, lets ensure the meaning of the available metrics
is clear

Named User Plus (NUP) Metric
 A user under this metric is a real individual (or an automated device)
who interacts with the licensed system.
 Hence schema ownership, authentication method and connection method are all
irrelevant
 It is NOT a measure of concurrency – prior to Sept 2002 there was a Concurrent
Device (CD) metric for which some customers still retain valid contracts.
 It also does not support the notion of job-sharing, ALL users must be licensed
(assuming no special contract has been negotiated)
 You are not obliged to keep a register of names, and it is accepted that staff
leave & join – but if audited you must be compliant
 Remember if using Oracle middleware as well as database, both tiers must reflect
the user community (or else use the Processor metric)
 Using a web-style architecture does not in itself invalidate use of NUPs (but if self-
registration is possible then Processor metric is required)

Processor Metric
Beware, this means two entirely different things.
 For products with “Standard Edition” in the name (including DB SE1),
a processor is counted as an occupied cpu socket WITH NO REGARD TO CORES.
 Otherwise, a processor in licensing terms is derived as follows:-
o Add up the cores in all relevant sockets
o Apply Oracle’s designated multi-core factor ** for the chip-type
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/contracts/processor-core-factor-table-070634.pdf
(tip : all Intel and AMD x86 chips are 0.5 factor).
E.g. 2 x quad-core Xeons = 8 cores = 4 Processor licences
For NUPs, take this result and multiply by the mandated minimum
e.g. in above case for DB Enterprise Edition 4 * 25 = 100 NUP minimum
** ignore the heading “Effective Date : March 16th 2009”.
The latest changes are listed at the end.

The “Magic Combination”
 The only situations where the Licensable Environment concept is not needed
involve products purchased on the Named User Plus metric, and where the
mandated minima are given as absolute numbers.
 The obvious examples are Database SE and SE1, and the Business Intelligence
Suites (SE1 and EE Plus).
 NUPs are inherently multi-server rights, and for these products the number
required is not linked to the infrastructure design, so simply license all the real
individuals.

Hardware Partitioning Benefits
 The concept and valid regimes are defined in
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/partitioning-070609.pdf
 if only part of a server is used to run Oracle products, then licence costs can be
reduced compared to licensing the entire physical server. Today’s extreme core-
densities make this more critical than ever.
 if multiple Oracle products are deployed on a physical server, partitions allow the
licensing to reflect usage of each without overlap, e.g. you could license 2 cpus for
Application Server and 2 cpus for Database, rather than covering 4 cpus for BOTH.
 it becomes possible to adopt different Oracle licence metrics for individual
partitions, typically this might be to use Named User Plus pricing for development
environments whilst Processor pricing may be mandated for production.
 Specific hardware partition regimes are documented via the White Paper,
including the challenges where some can be invalidated through
migration capabilities

Virtualised Server Farms
 Assume that each Intel server has 2 occupied cpu sockets,
and that they are of quad-core design.
 Therefore, 24 cores in the cluster (until you extend it…)
A typical virtualised server farm

You plan to run a single 4-core virtual machine for Oracle DB EE
Q.1: With VMWare, how many Processor licences are required?
A.1: 24.
No hardware partitioning is recognised.
No node affinity (DRS) is recognised.
Each server has 8 cores i.e. 4 licences.
Oracle assert the whole cluster must be covered.

You plan to run a single 4-core virtual machine for Oracle DB EE
Q.2: With Oracle VM for x86, how many Processor licences are required?
A.2: 24, or 2
Assuming Live Migration can occur, ALL servers must be
covered, and no hardware partitioning allowed.
Without Live Migration one could partition the 4 cores
i.e. 2 Processor licences.

You plan to run a 4-core virtual machine for Oracle DB SE
(servers must have a maximum potential spec of 4 sockets)
Q.3: With VMWare, how many Named User Plus licences are required?
(Assume a user community of 17 users).
A.3: 17.
The NUP metric covers ANY NUMBER of servers.
There are no per-server or per-cpu minima mandated for DB SE.
I call this the “Magic Combination”.

Consolidation and/or Customisation?
 You may own ISV business applications that include Oracle Technology.
 These technology rights are acquired through ASFU licences – Application Specific
Full Use. The licences are limited to being used solely with the intellectual
property of the specific business solution.
 Similarly you may own Oracle eBusiness Suite licences, which provide Restricted
Use rights on products such as DB EE and OAS EE.
 Be aware that customising beyond the permitted scope of either of the above will
require Full Use licences
 Be aware that consolidation or refresh projects could lead to illegal mixes
of the above being placed together with other instances in a single licensed
environment. This is only possible when Full Use licences are obtained.

HOW IS ORACLE
LICENCED ON
THE CLOUD?
…… WHICH CLOUD?

Reviewing the different types of Cloud
• Subscription
based;
• No conventional
licences needed.
Oracle Cloud
Services
Authorised
Cloud
Environments
Hosting
Providers
Managed
Service
Providers
On Premise
(Private
Cloud)
Hybrid Cloud
• Published rules
for AWS &
Azure;
• Note: Amazon
off subscription
as well.
• Oracle licences
are owned by
the hoster, not
the client;
• Proprietary
Hosting =
multiple client
orgs;
• LASEU = one
client org.
• Note: The hoster
has to provide
some
Intellectual
Property in the
service.
• Beware!, MSP
needs to provide
each client with
a unique
Licensed
Environment
that mathches
the licence
entitlement
• H/W Partitioning
and / or
virtualisation
principles will
apply;
• Architect
carefully!.
• No special
considerations;
• Evaulate each
deployment
separately

Database 12C: Multitenant Option
Does this help with cloud deployments?
Let’s start by thinking about the name “Multitenant”.
It can imply two different concepts:-
 In a hosted cloud, it could mean truly multi-tenant in the sense of multiple
client organisations
 In all cases, it means a single installed database system providing the framework
in which to run multiple, completely isolated database instances

Multitenant Option Benefits
 Sweats the infrastructure assets to deliver more performance than a collection of
multiple instances
 Enables High Availability, Disaster Recovery and Backups to be managed at the
Container Database level
 Greatly facilitates moving or cloning of the Pluggable databases between
Containers.
 This really helps Oracle in running their Applications in the Cloud.
But will it help you with your needs?

Multitenant Option Issues
 Multitenant Option is no solution for the demise of the Generic Hosting
model of licensing
 Multitenant is an Option, and as we’d expect therefore applies only to
DB EE. So no one should be planning to consolidate all their tiny SE/SE1
databases, it’s not going to happen.
 What may confuse is that SE and SE1 do allow the choice of the Multitenant
architecture, but only with ONE pluggable database present (no Option needed).
So not very “multi” then.
However this would help when switching to a new patch level or version, you can
prepare the new Container DB (CDB) with the new software level, then quickly
move or clone the Pluggable database (PDB).
 The CDB is the thing associated with the software binaries, so the whole system
will always be at a single version level (right down to the Patch level).
 Do all your apps work on the same patch level of Oracle?
If not their databases can’t co-reside under a single CDB.
 Licensing is applied to the CDB level and so any Options used by any PDBs
will be licensable for the whole infrastructure

Summary
 Oracle’s licensing principles take a less than intuitive position regarding
virtualised and “migrate-able” environments.
 Today’s hardware is over-burdened with core-density that was unthinkable only a
few years ago.
 The key tool available to customers and managed service providers to retain
control of licensed capacity is Oracle’s concept of hardware partitioning
 On commodity x86 hardware, only Oracle VM for x86 and Solaris x86 are
contenders for implementing hardware partitions, no matter how much
customers tend to gravitate towards VMWare or Hyper-V
 Always adopt my principle of Licensable Environment as your guiding light
 Cloud requirements need to be scrutinised to establish the underlying context.
In some cases special principles apply, but often the matter will be resolved into
the virtualisation or partitioning arenas, and rules for those must be applied

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