RE: Oracle License Audit
- From: "Dunbar, Norman (Capgemini)" <norman.dunbar.capgemini@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <howard.latham@xxxxxxxxx>, "ORACLE-L" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 10:53:02 -0000
In summary:
Oracle will come to your place of work and ask to see valid license
details for all your products - installed or in use, makes no
difference. (See below!)
They may/will run various scripts to audit what you have
running/installed - as is their wont.
You will then be told that you are under/over/perfectly licensed for all
the products you have installed or are in use.
If under, you will have to pay up - or get a bl--dy good case for why
you don't think you should pay!
If perfect, all fine and dandy.
If over licensed, it could happen, I rather suspect you won't be seeing
a refund from Oracle. Hard lines - they will say - should have got it
right from the start!
I know of/lived through a couple of these audits:
A large governmental department in the UK got hammered for being
seriously under licensed. To the tune of around 3 million Sterling.
Another one got hammered because they had installed the default options
on a number of Oracle versions. This, according to the docs at the time
was fine as "you only have to license the products you actually use". Oh
no you don't - regardless of what the install docs said, you have an
on-line doc that says, somewhere on page 38, that you license everything
you INSTALL.
After much wailing, consultancy and gnashing of teeth, said agency got
screwed to the tune of "a lot". Said agency did get a letter of intent
from Oracle to allow them to continue paying for USED products (for
already installed versions of Oracle) but all new installs would be
licensed by INSTALLED products.
Things to beware of:
1. The Tuning and Diagnostics are installed and can't be uninstalled. If
you use them, the registry knows and you need to license them. So much
for paying for INSTALLED products then - this doesn't compute!
2. If you patch 10205 (or it may be 10203) there is a bug. The patch kit
re-enables all the options you specifically have turned off and rebuilds
the binaries to include them. This is an Oracle bug - but that doesn't
help the audit - you have these products installed so must pay for them
- even if you carefully turned the options off when installing
originally and rebuilt the binaries with these options removed, the
damned patch puts them all back!
3. Partitioning is in use by SYSTEM. Regardless. Turn it off and it
still gets installed. Luckily, the registry differentiates between user
and system use.
4. Etc.
It's a nightmare!
I'm currently running Oracle supplied auditing script on a monthly basis
on every (known) server at this location - HP and Linux - and for all
versions of Oracle above 7.3 (Don't ask!) - happy to share my cron tasks
and code.
This script is the one that the audit guys will use and as far as I
remember, the results go to Egypt to be analysed. Not sure how that
works now, after the revolution.
Cheers.
Norm.
Norman Dunbar
Contract Senior Oracle DBA
Capgemini Database Team (EA)
Internal : 7 28 2051
External : 0113 231 2051
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Howard Latham
>> Sent: 02 March 2011 09:31
>> To: ORACLE-L
>> Subject: Oracle License Audit
>>
>> Click here
>> <https://www.mailcontrol.com/sr/wQw0zmjPoHdJTZGyOCrrhg==
>> fvsb2U8i9oDn6!NSUa3xEGqDfzJ+GRHJbN74uIqGSYIPCELtzovJ!KJwA==>
>> to report this email as spam.
>>
>>
>>
>> We have just had a letter in Which Oracle Invite themselves
>> to audit our licenses.
>> Does anybody know what this entails?
>> It's particularly inconvenient as our DR site is kicking us
>> out in 30 days in favour of the London Olympics.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Howard A. Latham
>>
>>
>>
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