Re: Hello some idea to include a contract clause to protect against virtual machines

  • From: Tim Gorman <tim@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 09:44:58 -0700

Paul,

Not sure what recent interpretations you've seen, but to my knowledge the issue has been left in a gray area by Oracle, perhaps deliberately?

As a result, VMware is advising their Oracle customers <http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vmw-understanding-oracle-certification-supportlicensing-environments.pdf> on how to navigate through that legal gray zone, with the basic idea that customers should virtualize but track/audit to prove that they did not implement virtualization contrary to the *intent* of Oracle licensing policies.

As far as Oracle's well-known threat to "withhold support for installations on VMware" (also addressed in the article), we have had several discussions about this here on the ORACLE-L list, including an informal poll asking if anyone has ever experienced this withholding of support. As I recall, nobody could substantiate this ever happening, so it might be considered a very slim (to non-existent) possibility.

Hope this helps...

-Tim



On 11/24/14 9:10, Paul Drake wrote:

I would have thought that recent interpretations of licensing the Oracle database server software in a virtualized environment (namely VMware vCenter 5.x) would have extinguished this as a possibility.

On Nov 24, 2014 8:48 AM, "Juan Carlos Reyes Pacheco" <jcdrpllist@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:jcdrpllist@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

    Hello, please
    does anybody includes in the contract something against the use of
    virtual machines to install Oracle.
    One of our customer has a virtual machine that degrades the
    performance, and is necessary to restart the server periodically.
    They expect we solve something we can't solve, because the problem
    is in the virtual machine, other customer with the same software
    doesn't have that problem.

    I was asking myself if there is a "standard" clause in the
    contracts for the customer to free from problem related to virtual
    machines.
    In example I read there is no support from oracle for vmware
    machines, if you have a bug you have to demostrate this same bug
    happens in a physical installation too.

    Thank you :)



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