RE: Oracle on Virtual Machines

Hi List, I spoke to Oracle Sales and below is what I was told.
 
"Oracle can run on Vmware. As per the licensing, it goes with the
Physical Hardware sizing but not with every VM we run on the physical
server. 
 
If we have the server with 2 Intel Quad Core CPU, we need the 4 CPU
license to run Oracle on that box regardless of how many Virtual
Machines we setup using that Hardware. Oracle can run on all the virtual
machine with all the 8 cores.
 
Physical Hardware - 2 * QuadCore CPU = 8 Core * (0.5/core multiplier for
Intel Processors) = 4 CPU License
 
From the Oracle support perspective, they might ask us to re-produce the
issues in a non VM aware environment for an unknown bug. "
 
Raja.

________________________________

From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Freeman, Donald
Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 8:55 AM
To: 'jifjif@xxxxxxxxx'; tony_vanlingen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Oracle on Virtual Machines


That is true.  When discussing this with the VM team they got a
distinctly sour look on their face.  Oracle is simply making life
difficult.  The server administrators have no benefit from operating
multiple clusters or having to actually disable or defeat VM features
just in order to satisfy the DBA groups silly licensing problem.   They
also don't want to operate two different types of incompatible VM's.
Since we have committed to VMWare and have an Enterprise license and our
state is 90% Microsoft there won't be any growth in the Oracle portion
of the database market here.
 
Donald Freeman
Database Administrator II
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Department of Health
Bureau of Information Technology
2150 Herr Street
Harrisburg, PA 17103
dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx
 
 

________________________________

From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ~Jeff~
Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 2:07 AM
To: tony_vanlingen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Oracle on Virtual Machines


We were evaluating this for a ct (in NZ, Oz) and they were looking at
having to license every core (or CPU) in the VM cluster that Oracle runs
in , leading to the conclusion that Oracle would need it's own VM
cluster(s) for licensing reasons, rather than sharing a cluster with all
the  app/web  servers and other rif-raf ;)

HTH -
Jeff

2009/6/11 Tony van Lingen <tony_vanlingen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


        Mmmm, that's interesting. We had a discussion here last week
about this very topic. It appears that (at least here in Oz) one would
have to licence every core for every installed virtual machine (with
Oracle on it), so if you would install 2 VMs on a 4-core machine, you'd
have to licence 16 cores.. 
        
        Has anyone a definitive answer? 
        
        Cheers,
        Tony
        

        Freeman, Donald wrote: 

                Yes, my understanding is that you would have to buy 8
CPU's worth of licenses for the 4 quad cores and you could create
however many VM's the host could handle. I am not very familiar with
Oracle VM to speak to it's features.  We (Commonwealth of PA) plunged an
bought an Enterprise license for VMWare so that's all we have. I don't
know if Oracle has an equivalent to Vmotion but if you've only got one
VM host what are you going to use it for?  You don't start getting the
full benefit of a VM until you have a cluster and can failover to
another physical machine.
                
                You haven't escaped any of the organizational problems
that you would normally experience mixing production and development
tiers. We have a production VM cluster/SAN and a development VM
cluster/SAN.  Just from an administrative point of view in the event of
a failure it's not good practice to cripple both your developers and
users with one issue.
                
                Donald Freeman
                Database Administrator II
                Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
                Department of Health
                Bureau of Information Technology
                2150 Herr Street
                Harrisburg, PA 17103
                dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx
                 
                
                -----Original Message-----
                From: Subbiah, Nagarajan
[mailto:Nagarajan.Subbiah@xxxxxxxx] 
                Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 10:15 AM
                To: Freeman, Donald; Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
                Subject: RE: Oracle on Virtual Machines
                
                Hi Donald, Thanks. If we have the 4 Quad Core VM Host on
Intel x86 platform, once you purchase the 8 CPU license using Oracle
Licensing Metric multiplier (0.5/core for Intel) then we can have any
number of VM with the any number virtual CPUs. OR for every VM's virtual
CPU, you need to buy the license for.
                
                Oracle VM is similar to VMWare? Does it have all the
features of VMWare (especially Vmotion)?
                
                Though the SQL server is out of the scope for
discussion, Any cons you have found of using SQL Server VMs combining
both development,test and production in a single physical server
assuming enough hardware resources are in place. We are looking at the
options for SQL Server as well to consolidate 10s of SQL Servers.
                
                Raja.
                
                -----Original Message-----
                From: Freeman, Donald [mailto:dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx]
                Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 8:58 AM
                To: Subbiah, Nagarajan; Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
                Subject: RE: Oracle on Virtual Machines
                
                There should be a long discussion on Oracle on VM in the
May archives.
                Oracle discourages the use of VMWare through licensing
restrictions which it does not apply to itself if using Oracle VM.  You
have to buy a license for every CPU on the VM host whether or not you
are using it. I think the Oracle VM uses a config file to set the number
of CPU's that Oracle uses.  We don't have any production Oracle VM's but
have some
                development on VM clusters.   We have a lot of
production SQL Server
                VM's. 
                
                
                Donald Freeman
                Database Administrator II
                Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
                Department of Health
                Bureau of Information Technology
                2150 Herr Street
                Harrisburg, PA 17103
                dofreeman@xxxxxxxxxxx
                 
                
                -----Original Message-----
                From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
                [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Subbiah, Nagarajan
                Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 7:20 AM
                To: Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
                Subject: Oracle on Virtual Machines
                
                Hi List,
                
                Does Oracle support running the Oracle databases on VMs
using SAN?
                Oracle also has something called Oracle VM. How does it
different from Vmware solutions?. 
                
                Also, Looking to move the hardware from HP  PA RISC
architecture to x86 using Linux. What is the equivalent of 4 Dual Core
PA8900 processeors compared to the HP Machines especially DL-G Series. 
                
                Any one has any experience of running production and
development on same VM host; Assuming enough hardware resources in place
any pros/cons of sharing the prod and dev on the same VM host?
                
                Thanks in Advance.
                Raja.
                
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