RE: Hyperthreading - Oracle license
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2013 16:37:26 +0000
Message-ID: <0D8F4CAC0F9D3C4AACC63F50FD9957F72645DADF_at_PRDTXWPEMLMB32.prod-am.ameritrade.com>
As someone who lived through a license review last year I can confirm what Freek said. The real thing to be careful of is not letting someone build a virtualized environment on a cluster somewhere. We had to play whack-a-mole a few times there since they'd say, "Oh, we're just going to allocate 1 or 2 virtual cpus for a test environment" and it turns out it would be on a 128 core cluster so those 1 or 2 virtual cpu would have cost us several hundred thousand dollars.
Jay Miller
Sr. Oracle Database Administrator
201.369.8355
-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Christopher.Taylor2_at_parallon.net
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2013 9:04 AM
To: Freek.DHooge_at_uptime.be
Cc: bill_at_intactus.com; oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: RE: Hyperthreading - Oracle license
Thanks Freek - good clarification of the issue. Based on what I've read online - Oracle is not always consistent on that (probably a lack of knowledge even by the sales reps on the differences between hyperthreading and multi-cores. I was under the impression that if the OS showed a certain count of cpus you had to use that number and multiply it by the factor but clearly I'm one of the ones in the "confused" boat. :)
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: D'Hooge Freek [mailto:Freek.DHooge_at_uptime.be]
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2013 7:56 AM
To: Taylor Christopher - Nashville
Cc: bill_at_intactus.com; oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Re: Hyperthreading - Oracle license
Hi,
The cpu threads are not playing a role when determining the number of processor licenses. Only the number of cores and processor type is important (for Enterprise Edition).
You can find this in the processor definition (should be in the end user agreement)
extract:
"The number of required licenses shall be determined by multiplying the total number of cores of the processor by a core processor licensing factor specified on the Oracle Processor Core Factor Table which can be accessed at http://oracle.com/contracts"
so 2 intel x86-64 quad cores with hyperthreading will show 16 os cpu's, but count for 8 cores and require 4 processor licenses.
A general remark:
Whenever you have a question on oracle licensing, don't (solely) trust on sources such as mailing lists (no, not even on me), but ask the question to your Oracle account manager and let him/her confirm in writing.
The amount of money involved when you get it wrong (either by buying to much of by getting penalties after a license audit) it way to high. ;-)
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Received on Tue Jan 08 2013 - 17:37:26 CET