FreeLists / oracle-l / Re: Oracle Standard Edition & RAC

["Mark Brinsmead" <pythianbrinsmead@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hmmm....  Where to start with this one?

Okay.  First, Standard Edition.  Yes, I have lots of clients who use
Standard Edition.  Many use Standard Edition (or Standard Edition One)
exclusively.  With multi-core processors, Standard Edition One can cost as
little as about 1/16th as much as Enterprise Edition (per processor).  If
you don't happen to need (really need) features available only in Enterprise
Edition, the cost differential (for both licensing and maintenance) can be
quite compelling.  In some cases, this difference can run to millions of
dollars!

In the past 5 or 6 years, I have seen much more SE than EE.  And for very
solid reasons.

Standard Edition with RAC?  I have never had a client who used this
combination.  While it is true that RAC is "free" with Standard Edition (but
not available at all with Standard Edition One) you are severely limited.
You must use (only) ASM storage and Oracle clusterware.  Much more
significantly, the maximum capacity of your entire cluster cannot exceed 4
CPUs (CPU cores, actually).  Note that this is "capacity", not installed
processors.  As true single processor (single-processor-core) systems are
getting harder and harder to find, this effectively limits you to a maximum
of 2 nodes in your cluster.  2-node clusters under certain configurations
(not sure whether OCS/ASM is one of them) can be subject to severe stability
issues, as failure of one node can result in "split-brain" conditions that
cause failure of the entire cluster.

Standard Edition RAC can be useful, I am sure.  And I have little doubt that
somebody is using it.  Somewhere.  But I would think that an application
that genuinely requires the "high availability" offered by RAC while
simultaneously living comfortably within the limits of a 4 CPU cluster would
be a very rare combination.


Now, finally, as to the lack of Diagnostics Pack / AWR data in Standard
Edition...

Well, that's not at all true.  Well, not entirely true, anyway.  AWR is
definitely present in Standard Edition, and the tables are (by default)
populated.  The same is true for most Diagnostic Pack tables/views that I
can think of.  There's just one catch, though.  You are not allowed to
access it!  Specifically, it seems that accessing this data (even from
SQL*Plus) requires licenses for Diagnostics Pack (and/or Performance Tuning
Pack) which cannot be obtained for Standard Edition.

I presently have an SR open with Oracle Support, requesting instructions for
a suported method of removing AWR from Standard Edition databases.  So far
the only answer I have received has been "go talk to your sales rep".  For
the life of me, I cannot understand why.  Why would I talk to a sales rep
about a licensing option that we both know is unavailable to me?

Anyway, if you happen to have an application that requires RAC (but not TAF
-- I'm not certain, but I don't think you can get that with SE), will
neverneed more than 4 CPUs, and can live without all of the cool nifty
features
of EE, you can save about $200,000 per cluster by using Standard Edition,
plus about $30,000 per year in support.  Over time, though, the lack of EE
features might make you pay back a big chunk of that in (maybe) increased
downtime and personnel costs.

Before you go down this path, be certain you know what you are sacrificing!
Make sure you are completely aware of all the features that are unavailable
with SE.



On 1/2/07, Job Miller <jobmiller@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> found one inaccuracy in my quick read of that comparative feature by
> version:
>
> there is a feature it describes as automatically maintaining global
> indexes when DDL is executed against partitioned tables.  It lists it as Y
> Y Y Y, but partitioning is only supported in 2 of the 4.. so I am not sure
> you can say 'Y' in Standard when the feature is referring to an underlying
> EE feature.  :)
>
> I'll report that inaccuracy.
>
> The biggest downside to SE that I see is no Diagnostics Pack (AWR) data
> available to you.
>
> so now if you throw in RAC, you have any more of a need to
> understand/diagnose the underlying wait data, but no convenient mechanism
> like AWR to collect all of that for you.
>
> Job
>
>
>
>
> *Robert Freeman <robertgfreeman@xxxxxxxxx>* wrote:
>
> Check out metalink note 271886.1 for a full comparitive list of the
> different features.
>
> RF
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Matthew Zito
> Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 4:39 PM
> To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Oracle Standard Edition & RAC?
>
>
>
> Folks,
>
> Had a quick question for the folks out here - how many people are using,
> or looking at using Standard Edition with RAC in lieu of EE? Are the
> cost savings worth the annoyance of the limitations? Why is/isn't
> everyone doing this? I have a customer that is asking for why they
> shouldn't be using Standard Edition - I'm an old EE bigot who thought
> standard edition was for integrating into software and laptops, but I've
> been hearing more and more people talk about using SE w/ RAC instead of
> EE for smaller environments. Thoughts?
>
> Thanks,
> Matt
>
> --
> Matthew Zito
> Chief Scientist
> GridApp Systems
> P: 646-452-4090
> mzito@xxxxxxxxxxx
> --
> http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
>
>
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>
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--
Cheers,
-- Mark Brinsmead
  Senior DBA,
  The Pythian Group
  http://www.pythian.com/blogs