Hi Robert just wondering - have you considered the SPARC VII alternatives in the M-series servers ? They are quad-core CPUs which boils down to a more granular 2 "processor" license per CPU. By all accounts they are better suited to single-threaded performance, vs the T-series (T4, T3 etc) CPUs. That could be a pro or con I guess, depending on your environment. We're doing a similar evaluation and are leaning towards M-series and SPARC VII for this reason. HTH, Jeff On 21 March 2012 03:19, Robert Laverty <Robert.Laverty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote: > We are planning a hardware refresh and management wants to move to Oracle > T4-2 servers. These come with two 8-core CPUs, which breaks down to 8 > "processors" for Oracle licensing (11gR2 EE). We're currently licensed for > 6 processors on these boxes. Our application is all I/O and seldom exceeds > 25% CPU. > > I have two questions: > Has anyone used psradm to disable cores in Solaris to reduce licensing > costs? Oracle's software sales guys claim that they don't know of any way > to shut off cores. There was a similar post here last April, but I didn't > see an answer. We want to keep it simple and avoid VM partitioning. > > Is a server more reliable with two CPUs than one? Our admin insists that > the redundancy is important, but I'm too skeptical to accept the premise > that Solaris/Oracle will survive a catastrophic CPU failure. We're > running a simple dedicated server with remote hot backup - no RAC. > > Bob Laverty > > > ________________________ > Bob Laverty > NJ MMS SenIORS Team Lead > 1.609.588.6273 29.6273 > [cid:image001.jpg@01CD067F.0913D3C0] > ____________________________________________________________ > Confidentiality Notice: This message, including any attachments, is for > the sole use of the intended recipients and may contain confidential and/or > privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, or > distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please > contact the sender and destroy/delete all copies of the original message, > including any and all attachments. > > IMPORTANT NOTICE TO RECIPIENT: This email is meant only for the intended > recipient of the transmission. In addition, this email may be a > communication that is privileged by law. If you received this email in > error, any review, use, disclosure, distribution, or copying of this email > is strictly prohibited. Please notify us immediately of the error by > return email, and please delete this email from your system. Thank you for > your cooperation. > > > -- > //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l > > > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l