Re: Licensing a disaster recovery system

  • From: Mark Brinsmead <mark.brinsmead@xxxxxxx>
  • To: gorbyx@xxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 20:32:15 -0700

You might want to re-read your license agreement. The standard license agreement
says that ALL computers on which Oracle software is installed must be licensed.
Of course, corporations with deep pockets can usually license their own agreements.

That's production, test, development, disaster recovery, QA, sandbox, EVERYTHING.

The OLSA *does* however, make special allowances for disaster recovery servers,
where you can pre-install the software, and perform test-recoveries. Providing there
is a database present on the D.R. server for (something like) not more than 4 days
(or parts thereof) in a calendar year, no license is required.

You can download the OLSA from www.oracle.com and read it yourself.  Be sure
to grab the one for you locale.

Peter, the OSLA *does* change over time. (Remember "Concurrent User Licenses"?)
You may want to check out the license that applies to you 8.1.7 (or earlier) purchase,
however, if this is a "fresh install", I think today's license probably applies.

Cheers,
-- Mark Brinsmead.

P.S. Please note: I am not a lawyer. All comments are based on a lay person's
understanding of the OLSA, and make no consideration whatsoever of anybody's
particular ciscunstances nor prevailing laws. DO NOT rely on MY interpretation
of this -- nor anything else. If in doubt, go hire a lawyer.

Oh yes, and DO NOT put /any/ faith in ANYTHING your sales rep. tells you,
whether verbally or in writing. The "standard" license agreement contains an
"Entire Agreement" clause, which makes any statements made by /anyone/
(outside of the license agreement itself) _/null and void/_. Sales rep.'s are free to
tell you ANYTHING, and right or wrong, their statements are not binding.
Personally, I have found that they are wrong more often than they are right.

If your sales rep. tells you something marvelous, like "you don't need licenses
for development", or "disaster recovery use is free", *don't believe it*, unless the
statement comes in the form of a legally binding ammendment to the OLSA.

If Oracle Corp. decides to audit your license compliance, the audit will NOT
be conducted by your friendly sales rep.



Alex Gorbachev wrote:

First, about backup strategy - I would recommend to restore it on
regular basis - say weekly or monthly. This way you always sure that
your backups are not just files.

Second part - licensing.
You don't need to license Oracle for test. It's a production system
that requires licenses. This is just my understanding.
For instance, we are not required to pay for our test systems and our
salesmen, afaik, are fine with that.

Just my 2 cents.

2005/11/4, Schauss, Peter <peter.schauss@xxxxxxx>:


We are in the process of configuring a disaster recovery system for four
small Oracle instances.  Our approach will be to install Oracle on the
box, restore backups of the production databases for test purposes, and
then shut down the copies instances and delete them.  The box will not
be used again until we either need it for a real recovery or we are
required to test our recovery procedures again.  Note that the Oracle
software will remain installed on the box and we will be keeping it
patched to the same level as the production system.

My management's rationale is that, since we are not running instances on
the disaster recovery box, we do not need a separate license for it.
When we loose the production box we will transfer the license to the
disaster recovery box.

Would Oracle agree?

If it matters, this is Oracle 8.1.7.4 on AIX 5.2.

Thanks,
Peter Schauss
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--
Best regards,
Alex Gorbachev
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