RE: T3 processor/system & Oracle License
- From: David Mitchell <DavidM@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ORACLE-L <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 09:38:34 -0700
Ah, now that brings up another source of friction. The fact that even with
virtualization we'd be forced to pay for all cpu's and cores in the machine
rather than just those that we use for Oracle. So, no virtualization isn't a
solution we can count on to control costs. At least not as things currently
stand. Hopefully Oracle will fix it's virtualization policies by the time we
need to upgrade too.
Without getting sidetracked by too many details related to our particular
situation, my point is simply that not all vendors have gone down Oracle's
path. They haven't adjusted their policies to the reality that you get
multiple cores nowadays whether you want them or not, and (since you brought it
up) they haven't adjusted their licensing policies to deal with the fact that
most workloads have moved towards virtualization (aka soft partitioning in
Oracle's terms).
David
David Mitchell
Network and Database Manager
Higher Education Coordinating Board
davidm@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:davidm@xxxxxxxxxxx>
(360)753-7892
From: timseanhall@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:timseanhall@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tim Hall
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 7:55 AM
To: David Mitchell
Cc: ORACLE-L
Subject: Re: T3 processor/system & Oracle License
Hi.
Your situation sounds like a classic case for server consolditation using
virtualization. Your processing requirement is not growning, but the hardware
is. Virtualization will allow you to keep the same number of Oracle licenses
and reduce the number of servers in you data center, which reduces costs (floor
space, cooling, power, UPS).
There is certainly no reason to increase your licensing just because the number
of cores has increased.
Cheers
Tim...
On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 3:40 PM, David Mitchell
<DavidM@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:DavidM@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
"Why should you expect to be able to do more processing for the same money?"
Because that is the path other vendors have chosen. We run MS SQL Server here
along with Oracle and MS only counts physical processors for their licensing.
We have relatively modest needs at our shop so those same dual processor
servers we've been buying all along still use the same license count regardless
of the fact that they now contain multiple cores. I'm not sure what I'm going
to do come the next Oracle upgrade cycle when each processor now contains X
cores and my license count starts a never ending climb. In my opinion, given
the industry shift from the Mhz race to the core count race, a reasonable
licensing policy needs to take this shift into account and not force their
customers to switch to other vendors to control costs. Just my .02.
David
________________________________________
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>] On Behalf
Of Tim Hall [tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 7:15 AM
To: jeremy.schneider@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:jeremy.schneider@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: zhuchao@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:zhuchao@xxxxxxxxx>; ORACLE-L
Subject: Re: T3 processor/system & Oracle License
Hi.
Why should you expect to be able to do more processing for the same money? If
you remember back in the day Oracle used to charge less per socket for Intel
than other CPUs (Sparc, Alpha, RISC) because the performance of Intel in
comparison was so crappy. Once intel played catch-up that discount was removed.
Fast forward and Oracle [started | were forced to start] charging different
prices for sockets compared to cores because they recognized a core was not
equivalent to a socket in terms of performance.
Fast foward again to the future and if you tell me that in a 64-core socket,
each core is not as productive as a core on a 4-core socket, then I will expect
a reduced cost per core on the 64-core chip compared to the 4-core chip, but if
they are equally productive, I would expect to pay the same per-core price.
It strikes me you have a choice:
a) You buy a big new server and you choose to use all the cores so you should
pay for the extra licenses.
b) You buy a big new server and use virtualization to create a VM that is
pinned to X number of cores. Your licensing costs have not changed and you have
lots of extra cores free to do something else with.
Multi-core does not have to affect your licensing. There will be many companies
who don't need the umph who will use bigger servers to consolidate. Those that
do need the extra horsepower do so because their requirements are growing, so
they should expect to pay more money.
I would not buy a Ferrari and expect to spend the same on petrol as I do for my
Renault Clio. :)
If you are listening Larry, please send me lots of cash for my justification of
your crappy pricing model.
Cheers
Tim...
On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 4:57 PM, Jeremy Schneider
<jeremy.schneider@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:jeremy.schneider@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx><mailto:jeremy.schneider@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:jeremy.schneider@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>>
wrote:
I was just talking about this at OpenWorld. I'm getting increasingly
frustrated with Oracle (and other folks are getting frustrated too).
Oracle needs to fix their broken licensing model.
For the past few decades, Moore's law has been applied to processors by
making smaller more efficient circuits and thus faster chips. In that
ecosystem, Oracle could charge by socket or by core because there was
room for processing growth without automatically doubling license costs.
Today the chips can't get any smaller. Moore's law is applied to
processors by increasing parallelism. Intel says "this new chip now has
64 cores!!" ...and I say "NOOOOOOOO! My license costs!!!!!"
We need to maintain the growth of processing capacity we've had for the
past few decades, but nobody can afford to start doubling our database
license costs every year. This business of "fractional pricing for
cores" isn't going to fix anything in the long run. Oracle REALLY needs
to do something about it, and I'm getting a bit tired of waiting...
these costs are getting a little crazy for the average business.
-Jeremy
Zhu,Chao wrote:
> with recent release of the T3 processor/system:
>
> so does anyone know how oracle is going to license the new T3
> processor for its oracle database server? in T2 it was 0.75/core, so
> each socket uses 6 oracle license;
>
> With T3 not adding more threads to each core, and each socket with 16
> cores, each socket is going to use 12 oracle license then?
>
> Also in the very early days the tech specification from external (even
> wiki) was each core of the T3 processor is going to be 16 threads
> (instead of the current 8 threads, which is same as T2); Was oracle
> afraid of charging each core 1.5 license:)?
>
>
> --
> Regards
> Zhu Chao
>
>
--
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+1 312-725-9249
Jeremy Schneider
Chicago
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