Since most of the newer chips does not follow this design, the rule still applies.

Hi Gustavo, The answer is yes, I did write this a while ago, and that this still applies. In fact I got an email from Oracle just yesterday on this exact topic confirming it still applies. An Intel multicore socket is not the same thing as a multi-chip module. In this case a core is not a processor for the purposes of SE licensing. The multi-chip module is basically a processor board in a mid range system or mainframe class server where you have multiple processors per board. The wording is quite open to interpretation and isn't exactly clear. So this is the understanding that I've had and has been confirmed by various interactions with Oracle to date, and customers interactions and agreements also.

But one thing you have hit on is that Oracle can and has changed licensing rules over time and you should always check with the most recently agreed license agreement contract that is signed and executed by both parties (you and Oracle) and legally binding. Anything other than this fully executed contract is really just here-say. The customer that this article is based on is still quite happily running many RAC nodes and clusters in their 4 node vSphere HA Cluster with each host having one socket.

My question is: even changing the licensing rules, is the rule of 4 sockets still in place? I mean: Can SE be used on a cluster with 4 intel sockets (8 core/socket) but paying the SE licenses for 16 processors?

"Processor: This metric is used in environments where users cannot be identified and counted. The Internet is a typical environment where it is often difficult to count users. This metric can also be used when the Named User Plus population is very high and it is more cost effective for the customer to license the Database using the Processor metric. The Processor metric is not offered for Personal Edition. The number of required licenses shall be determined by multiplying the total number of cores of the processor by a core processor licensing factor specified on the Oracle Processor Core Factor Table which can be accessed at http://oracle.com/contracts.
All cores on all multicore chips for each licensed program are to be aggregated before multiplying by the appropriate core processor licensing factor and all fractions of a number are to be rounded up to the next whole number. When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One or Standard Edition in the product name, a processor is counted equivalent to a socket; however, in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket."

Hi Jay, Re the elevator, we use NOOP, as per my article also on virtualizing Enterprise Oracle Databases on vSphere. I've done quite a lot of testing in virtualized environments with enterprise scale databases and this elevator provides the best performance due to the multiple layers of schedulers and queues that are involved in IO. In my experience getting the IO's to the driver and HBA as fast as possible (with least overhead) offers the best chance of lowest latency and highest throughput. With regard to ASMM, yes I did specify and use that. Within the defined SGA/PGA sizes we allocated Oracle knows best how to use that memory and adjust the different pools when needed. I did quite a few comparison tests running Swingbench 2.3 and 2.4 between using AMM and not using AMM. I found the performance and stability superior with huge pages (no risk of host swapping) and not using AMM. But in all cases ASMM was always enabled.

I just wish Oracle would change some of their products to allow use of Standard Edition instead of Enterprise Edition – for example, Oracle E-Business Suite requires Enterprise Edition. Bleh.

Question regarding setup just out of curiosity – I know in the past you advocated using elevator=deadline vs the standard CFQ elevator – did you do any testing regarding the performance with different elevators in this environment?

Also, I see you didn't use AMM because of it's incompatibility with huge pages. Did you utilize ASMM (Automatic Shared Memory Management – it was introduced with 10g) to balance the memory between the various sga pools / components and if not, why?

Like I said before, it sounds like an excellent design for leveraging Oracle Standard Edition.