Re: Reduce licensing costs - disable cores?
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:22:19 -0500 (CDT)
Message-ID: <38a391973801a01cf483a273e08fdb79.squirrel_at_society.servebeer.com>
Hi Bob,
> We are planning a hardware refresh and management wants to move to Oracle
> T4-2 servers. These come with two 8-core CPUs, which breaks down to 8
> "processors" for Oracle licensing (11gR2 EE). We're currently licensed for
> 6 processors on these boxes. Our application is all I/O and seldom exceeds
> 25% CPU.
What's your RAM upgrade like? That CPU could become much more important if
your buffer cache doubles or triples in size (provided factors like SQL and
data volume scanned remain relatively constant).
> Is a server more reliable with two CPUs than one? Our admin insists that
> the redundancy is important, but I'm too skeptical to accept the premise
> that Solaris/Oracle will survive a catastrophic CPU failure. We're
> running a simple dedicated server with remote hot backup - no RAC.
Unless Oracle has proof that their Sun box and all the software it runs can handle a CPU failure without crashing, then you've got something there. Otherwise, what are the chances that a modern CPU just fails? Can't be that high to justify a 6-figure expenditure in hardware and licensing, can it?
GL!
My $.02,
Rich
-- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-lReceived on Tue Mar 20 2012 - 12:22:19 CDT