Re: Restricting Oracle to one processor

Yes, this is correct.

Further, I am unaware of any partitioning method that qualifies as "Hard Partitioning" for commodity X86 hardware. Except *maybe* Oracle's VM -- there is nothing "hardware based" about it, but I believe I saw something a while ago saying that Oracle has classified this as "hard" partitioning.

*If* this is the case (you'll need to confirm that for yourself) then you could -- conceivably -- use Oracle VM to run Oracle databases on one set of cores, and VMware (assuming it works on Oracle VM) on the other set. You'll suffer a performance hit on both, I suspect.

I think you will probably be happier if you spend a few more dollars on hardware, and purchase two servers with one quad-core processor each. This will greatly disambiguate your licensing situation, and probably give (perhaps much) better performance as well.

Remember, there are many more shared resources within a server than just CPUs...

The OP did not say anything about database editions. Bill, you might also want to be aware that with the new license rules regarding Multi-Chip-Modules, the hardware you described will not be (cannot be) eligible for Standard-Edition One licenses if your quad-core processors are manufactured by Intel. (Actually, because Oracle seems to have accidentally mis-worded the new license rules, the hardware may be ineligible for SE of any flavour with CPUs from any manufacturer.)

On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 5:02 PM, Allen, Brandon <Brandon.Allen_at_oneneck.com> wrote:

> I don't know if it's possible or not, but Oracle requires you to license
> ALL the CPUs in the box, regardless of how many you allow Oracle to run
> on unless you implement what they call "hard partitioning". For more
> info: http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/partitioning.pdf
>
> Regards,
> Brandon
>
>
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-- 
Cheers,
-- Mark Brinsmead
Senior DBA,
The Pythian Group
http://www.pythian.com/blogs

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