Re: Hard Partitioning and Standard Edition

  • From: MARK BRINSMEAD <mark.brinsmead@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Ls Cheng <exriscer@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2015 09:50:11 -0400

There's a good chance that they ALWAYS needed to run Enterprise Edition, at
least under the strictest terms of the OLSA.

The trouble (as I recall it) with most p-series equipment is that when you
"upgrade" from 4 to 8 sockets, no new hardware is actually added. (Well,
that's what I remember to be the case with P5, anyway. I'm not sure about
more recent stuff.) The "maximum capacity" of the server was probably
*always* more than 4 sockets, even before the upgrade.

Oracle has traditionally made allowances for "capacity-on-demand" schemes
like this, I think, but I have never seen language to directly support such
allowances in the license agreement. When push comes to shove, nothing
(aside from good business sense) compels Oracle to honour such a policy.
Unless, of course, your corporate lawyers are clever enough to get Oracle
to amend the license agreement before you write a cheque.

On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 2:45 AM, Ls Cheng <exriscer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have a customer who upgraded their HW (AIX) from 4 sockets to 8 sockets
and they had to upgrade their standard edition license to Enterprise. They
are running now LPAR which is similar to Solaris Zone I believe?

On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 10:19 PM, Charlotte Hammond <
dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi All,

I know that I should speak to Oracle to get a definitive answer but am
just looking for a quick heads up if this is a dead end...

The question I have is that can I use hard partitioning (in this case
Solaris Zones) in conjunction with Standard Edition licencing? I had a
look at the os-zones-hard-partitioning-2347187.pdf but it is about
calculating equivalent numbers of cores, which is an Enterprise Edition
metric, not a Standard Edition one. I am therefore assuming this document
is specific to Enterprise licencing.

In Standard Edition we have to licence per socket - do zones have any
place here in reducing the socket count or getting around the cap - or
would I just have to ignore the zones and licence every socket on the
physical server and also limit myself to a server with only 4 sockets?

Thanks!
Charlotte



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