Running Oracle in a Virtual Server Environment – License Regulation

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Running Oracle in a Virtual Server Environment – License Regulation
License regulations.

In addition to the attached Support statement, additional license rules need to be take in consideration when license Oracle databases on Virtual Machines.

·         If the VM instance only can use the amount of CPU’s that the physical server can provide (blade server or server doesn’t matter), this will represent the amount of CPU’s to be licensed
For example, a blade server with maximum two CPU sockets contains two quad-cores of Intel processors will utilize two (2) Oracle Standard Edition One CPU licenses. Following formula applies; Number of CPU’s * Number of Cores * Core Factor, where the Core factor for Intel on Standard Edition One/Standard Edition is 0.25.

·         If the VM instance is part of a cluster, i.e. there is an active failover mechanism, all servers in the cluster need to be included in the license calculation.
For example, if three (3) servers are included in the VM cluster and has two (2) Intel quad-cores each with maximum of two (2) CPU sockets; each of the servers shall be licensed separate which will utilize six (6) Oracle Standard Edition One licenses. This rule applies only when it comes to VM, had it been Oracle RAC the license would be 12 Oracle Enterprise Edition licenses. Following formula applies; Total Number of CPU’s * Number of Cores * Core Factor, where the Core factor for Intel on Enterprise Edition is 0.5.

If a customer has a Blade Chassis, like IBM BladeCenter with seven (7) Server blades with maximum of two (2) CPU slots and two (2) quad-cores installed, the customer have to license all blade servers; i.e. need to buy seven (7) Oracle Standard Edition One licenses.

An interested configuration for customer’s could be to allocate two server blades to the VM for Oracle and run Production on one of the VM’s and Test database on the other VM. If a failover needs to be taken, the customer shuts down Test and move Production to the Test VM instances. With this configuration the customer need to buy four (4) Oracle Standard Edition One licenses.

Support policies.

Today customers are frequently using Virtual Machine services such as VMware, Citrix XEN Server and others. IFS does not specifically certify the use of IFS Applications on virtual servers. However, IFS will support customers using virtualization technology in the following manner:

If a problem arises and it is a known IFS Applications issue, IFS will recommend an appropriate solution. If that solution does not work, the customer must contact the VM software vendor's support for further help. If the problem is determined to be an unknown IFS Applications issue when running on a VM, the issue must be reproduced on a physical system by the customer or VM vendor support before IFS will try and solve the problem. All issues which are determined to be VM specific will be referred back to the customer, who should contact VM vendor support.See for example Oracles VMware policy statement (Note:249212.1: Support Status for VMware).