Important - Oracle Pricing on Standby/DR/Failover databases

Hi All

For those sites with either a standby, DR or failover database, the following information is very important to you. You could be in breach of Oracle's Licensing agreement and could cost you $100,000s if not millions $$

(Read the summary at the end if you want to skip the details)

In the last issue of Select, I wrote that with Oracle's new Failover policy you now need not purchase two sets of Oracle licences
(one for the production server and the other for the Standby server)
if the standby server was not activated for more than 10 days in a calender year.

This was based on the following information I received FAILOVER POLICY Oracle recognizes that customers may require very infrequent and limited use of their failover server. To address this use, we are modifying the current failover policy, which currently requires a full use of the Database on any failover server. Effective today, Oracle allows Oracle Database licensed users to load the database in main memory on an unlicensed spare computer for up to a total of ten separate days in any given calendar year. Any use beyond the right granted in the previous sentence must be licensed separately.

So, in this instance if you have DataGuard, it implies that failing over to the 2nd box while the primary is down is OK with one license. Right? WRONG.

Since the article, Oracle has come out with more clarifications as a lot of people were querying about the definitions and legalities.

The confusion is with the definition of STANDBY vs FAILOVER.

Here is an extract of a correspondence from Oracle: There have been a number of changes recently to our policies and licencing requirements for backup/standby databases. This email is to clarify the new policies.

The following is on page 19 of the current Software Investment Guide, which can be downloaded from eSource and oracle.com:

Backup/Failover/Standby - Oracle differentiates between 3 methods of database recovery: Backup - In this type of recovery, database files of the primary database are stored on tape media. In this type of environment, Oracle permits customers to store a back up copy of the database data on storage devices, such as tapes, without purchasing additional licenses. Failover - In this type of recovery, nodes are configured in "cluster;" the first installed node acts as a primary node. If the primary node fails, one of the nodes in the cluster acts as the primary node. In this type of environment, Oracle permits licensed Oracle Database customers to run the Database on an unlicensed spare computer for up to a total of ten separate days in any given calendar year. Any other use requires the environment to be fully licensed. Additionally, the same metric must be used when licensing the databases in a failover nvironment. Standby - In this type of recovery, a copy of the primary database is maintained on a separate server at all times. These systems are configured for disaster recovery purposes. If the primary database fails, the standby database is activated to act as the new primary database. In this environment, both the primary and the standby databases must be fully licensed. Additionally, the same metric must be used when licensing the databases in a standby environment. You should note from the above that these are Oracle's definitions, and your customer may have a different understanding of the terms backup, failover and standby. The important concept is the 3 different methods of recovery - offline storage, clustered nodes operating on a Storage Array Network, and a copy of the database maintained on a separate server. The offline storage (Backup) does not require additional licences. The clustered nodes (Failover) do not require additional licences if the spare node is used for no more than ten separate days per calendar year. Where a copy of the database is maintained on a separate server (Standby), that server must be licenced as though it were a production server. If the production server is licenced by Processor, the standby server must also be licenced by Processor. If the production server is licenced by Named User Plus, the number of Named User Plus licences must cover at least the minimum licencing requirement for both production and standby servers. The minimum is 25 Named User Plus per processor. Recovery systems that fall into the Failover category include Oracle Failsafe, Veritas Cluster Server, IBM HACMP, Sun Cluster, HP Service Guard and Microsoft MSCS.

Recovery systems that fall into the Standby category include Oracle Data Guard and remote 'mirroring' solutions such as EMC SRDF, Veritas Volume Replicator and Sun StorEdge.

I attach some slides which provide further clarification. Note that on the 'Licencing Rules' slide we define our licencing as it was pre September 2002, and as it is now post September 2002, so please don't confuse the two. Also note that these slides are labelled Oracle Internal Confidential - they are for your education and not for giving to customers. The Software Investment Guide is the documentation we give to customers on our policies.

If you have any questions on this material please contact me.

NAME DELETED
I think that stinks. And Stink big time. The big O is not going to win this one. Why should you pay for two sets of Oracle S/W if your DR site is never used. And when it is used, the primary is dead anyway. So you only have one copy running at any one time.

For detail information, goto:

http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/index.html?sig.html http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/index.html?presentations.html

Have a read in the SIG (software Investment Guide), page 20. http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/sig.pdf

NOW. I have legal advice from legal counsel that you are NOT in breach if you are in Australia because of the following:

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s47c.html Point (1) and point (2)

I would like to know what you think about this and if you disagree with the policy, to take it to your Oracle rep, User Group representatives, IOUG-A board or send me your comments. There is a international committee representing the Americas, EMEA and Asia consisting of Oracle users that is assisting Oracle with their pricing policies. I will be collating comments and case studies for them to review.

SUMMARY If you are licensed for Oracle on your Production server and you have a standby server and/or a DR site that uses filesystem replication eg EMC, SAN replication, Veritas Volume Replicator, NetApps replication or even Oracle DataGuard, you MUST purchase THREE sets of Licences. Production Server, Standby server & DR server.

Why pay for Oracle licences for a server that is not started up/active or in used?

Am I missing something or something is really screwed up here.

PS: The posting from Jay Hostetter" <jhostetter_at_decommunications.com>,

        Subject: Oracle pricing
        Dated:  Wed, 09 Oct 2002 
      with regards to the example in the SIG (Software Investment Guide),
      http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/sig.pdf  pg 15
      of the Warehouse with 15 Temp sensors, 30 forklifts 
      and 400 forklift drivers requires you to buy a licence for
      415 user licences. 

ta
tony

 _____       ________ / ____|Tony Jambu, Database&Web Consultant
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