Hi Kal, I would recommend you read this article again and also http://longwhiteclouds.com/2014/10/04/oracle-fud-…. As it is relevant to your question. The answer is you only have to license the processors where Oracle is installed and/or running. If it's only running on one host, that's all you have to license. But you must make sure it only ever runs on a host where it is licensed and be able to prove that. The easiest way to manage license compliance is to have a dedicated cluster for your Oracle VM's, or a standalone host if you only want to license a single host, however that has no high availability. So realistically the minimum you should license is 2 hosts. If they each had 2 sockets and 4 cores, that would be 8 processor licenses required for the two host cluster, and you can still make use of high availability.

Thanks for the great information it was very helpful.

I just wanted to confirm about VMSphere and licensing the following.

If there is a VM Sphere cluster and it has 4 hosts each with 2 Intel CPUs and 4 cores but i installed oracle enterprise database on one host in a virtual machine on that host only. Does oracle license on the entire cluster for all the 4 hosts (2*4*0.5*4=16 licenses) or just for the host (2*4*0.5=4 licenses)

Kindly advise

have a great day

Kal

Yep, you've got that right. It's all in that webinar as well. You really don't have to say too much, just ask the right questions and stick to what's in the contract. Essentially if it's not in the contract it doesn't exist. Just don't accept the bullying tactics. Pay exactly what you legally owe and no more.

I’ll definitely follow your suggestion though, and see where it goes from there..

HI Glen, Might be a good idea to get their legal involved if they want to push it. But I would start by saying that you've got the original agreement, you've read it form cover to cover, and you can't find anything in it at all that says you owe them anything. If they would kindly point out in the contract where it says you should do anything you'd like to know. If they can't find anything in the wording of the contract, then you have your answer. It's that simple. They'll probably point to a whole lot of the documents on their web site, like the software investment guide etc. But you can just say to them that those documents state they are for educational purposes only and may not be included in any contract, and that any contract replaces all prior agreements both verbal and written. Thanks very much, see you later.

I did manage to get hold of (a copy of) our original OLSA by contacting the Oracle fellow who sends our license renewal notice every year. It’s a scanned copy of the original and I read it from start to end and the only place I found reference to processors at all was where it mentioned that “Oracle database standard edition may only be used on machines which have the ability to run a maximum of four processors or on a cluster of machines supporting up to a maximum of four processors per cluster”

There’s a similar mention regarding standard edition one as well, but nothing at all about processors, partitioning etc. or VMWare etc.

I also could not find any mention of how current online documents etc. would supercede the OLSA, unless I missed something. Our OLSA was done in 2005, and I went through some old emails with the renewal notices and found nothing other than the license renewal quotes – no contract addendums etc.

We’ve got another call next week with the licensing guy and our sales rep – I know from the last two conversations they’re going be using the pressure tactics again, I’m considering bringing up the L(egal) word & suggesting that perhaps our lawyer needs to talk to their legal dept..

I was able to get the link to work. I will include it in the body of the article. http://www.dbta.com/Webinars/Details.aspx?EventID…

Not sure if it’s the same one or not..

I’m trying to locate our OLSA to read it, but the original NUP purchase was made long ago and they don’t send a new one out with support renewals.

The convo’s with the Oracle rep’s was quite frustrating – the one with the licensing rep when going over the findings said that any failure to comply would result in back charges retro to the day we got the findings (which was yesterday – as specified in the findings doc), and that the sales rep would contact us and propose solutions. Then the convo with the sales rep today he was extremely vague about solutions saying he had no authority and implied our solution was to pay up & also possibly face back charges for as long as we’ve been running Oracle on VMWare.

Very puzzling behaviour, treating loyal customers like this – especially when I talked to an Oracle rep (unfortunately just over phone) before we migrated to VM environment and was specifically told we had to make sure all the available processors on THE HOST needed to be counted – no mention of the entire cluster.

I highly recommend that everyone watch this webinar that JW mentions. If it's not in the contract then it is completely irrelevant and you have no legal obligation to do anything.

Based on which contractual obligation they are claiming this?

This webinar might be a very well spent hour.
http://www.dbta.com/Webinars/Details.aspx?EventID…