RE: Oracle License Audit
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2013 06:36:46 -0400
Message-ID: <030601cec4db$75231b40$5f6951c0$_at_rsiz.com>
An interesting strategy from Mogens Norgaard presented at Oaktable world is to require Oracle to certify that their scripts will do no damage to your systems.
Apparently, no such certification will be forthcoming, and you should not allow external parties to run scripts on your systems that are not certified to be harmless.
"We do not use uncertified scripts."
This is not intended to help you run Oracle licenses illegally, but rather to help you avoid breaching your fiduciary responsibility to protect systems for which you are responsible.
Regards,
mwf
-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org]
On Behalf Of edwin devadanam
Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2013 5:17 AM
To: Rui.Amaral_at_tdsecurities.com;
'norman.dunbar.capgemini_at_environment-agency.gov.uk';
howard.latham_at_gmail.com; ORACLE-L
Subject: Re: Oracle License Audit
am planning to write script to avoid licensing issue(12.1.3 Ebiz application
and 11.2.0.3 DB) any help please?
thanks,
Edwin.K
On Wednesday, March 2, 2011 7:44 PM, "Amaral, Rui" <Rui.Amaral_at_tdsecurities.com> wrote:
Ditto with Norman on this one as well. On top of that if they do run scripts (and with your network guys assistance, port scans [yes that has been done in my scenario]) they may find developer boxes with standard or enterprise editions running instead of developer editions. It's up to your management and oracle reps to determine how to handle that situation, ie., allowing a certain period of time to track them down and move them to a licensed server.
Rui Amaral
-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org]
On Behalf Of Dunbar, Norman (Capgemini)
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2011 5:53 AM
To: howard.latham_at_gmail.com; ORACLE-L
Subject: RE: Oracle License Audit
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:
- 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!
- 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!
- Partitioning is in use by SYSTEM. Regardless. Turn it off and it still gets installed. Luckily, the registry differentiates between user and system use.
- 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_at_freelists.org
>> [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] 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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