Re: New instance(s) setup question

I'm not involved in the pricing. I work at a "field office", and things like pricing enterprise contracts are done through the Director's office. Unfortunately though, nobody in the Director's office knows anything about Oracle, and simply believes everything the salesfolks say. They've negotiated for an enterprise Unlimited License Agreement for Enterprise Edition and a couple extra add-ins. And they used enormously exaggerated metrics. But this year they (the Director's office), aren't paying for the agencies use, they've created the bogus metrics and then pushed the cost out to the various field offices to absorb, without increasing heir budgets. So we are locked in with the cost until October when a new contract year starts, so I'm trying to get onto Amazon. While the monthly cost is a little higher, they'll also do all of the updates, which actually saves us money, especially since I'm not sure yet who would, or could, take over for me.

There is a real reason that quote Larry Ellison said at that conference in DC about 23 years ago. Something along the lines of "Government doesn't know databases, that's why they pay me too much money".

On Thu, Jun 6, 2019 at 10:07 AM Tom Dale <tom.dale_at_fivium.co.uk> wrote:

> Bill,
>
> If you have already established you can run on SE2 and you can do the
> migration (exp/imp)
> Why don't you do that now?
>
> For a single socket physical machine you only need 1 license for Standard
> Edition
>
> Oracle Database Standard Edition 2 (Processor; 1 Year) US$3,500.00
> Software Update License and Support (First Year) US$3,850.00
>
> Total: US$7,350.00 (Full list price) for a Termed license with full
> support.
>
> You would pay US$7,350.00 per year, no up front costs.
>
> That's US$612.5/month
>
> And to simplify things more,
> script backup as a shutdown and cold file copy,
> Any SysAdmin could do a file copy restore.
> As you said you don't need to be accessible during non-duty hours?
>
> Tom
>
> On Thu, Jun 6, 2019 at 1:03 PM Bill Ferguson <wbfergus_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> :)
>>
>> Yep, being a Federal employee, I lost count years ago of how many times
>> I've been told I was stupid for doing any work over weekends, holidays, or
>> other 'after hours' situations.
>>
>> But I've always looked at it as a salaried job, and I have prescribed
>> work plans assigned each year. When other groups like network security,
>> etc. do something stupid and time-consuming, I then have to work around
>> those obstacles while still trying to keep pace with my workload. And
>> somewhere in the mix I'm also supposed to find time to improve things and
>> make everything cheaper and more efficient, even though I don't have those
>> hours assigned as part of my workload. So, there's really no choice but to
>> do work "after hours". But at least I can remote in so I don't have to make
>> the 77 mile round trip all the time when I do. :)
>>
>> And everybody else, thanks for the input. After talking with the SysAdmin
>> and discussing how things are looking, at least for right now I think I'll
>> go with two separate installations on the same server.
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 3:37 PM Mark W. Farnham <mwf_at_rsiz.com> wrote:
>>
>>> <snickering on>
>>>
>>> If I don't retire next year, that Amazon configuration would limit my
>>> ability to do system work over the weekends, but oh well.
>>>
>>> <snickering off>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 1) I bet your bean counter got some dandy meals and so forth
>>>
>>> 2) Good on yas! (So sorry, I am unable to reach the server remotely
>>> on weekends. Thanks for calling and triggering my 4 hour minimum, but I
>>> cannot help you until Monday. By the way, why are you accessing the server
>>> out of prescribed hours?)
>>>
>>> mwf
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:
>>> oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] *On Behalf Of *Bill Ferguson
>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, June 05, 2019 3:02 PM
>>> *To:* Noveljic Nenad
>>> *Cc:* oracle-l-freelists
>>> *Subject:* Re: New instance(s) setup question
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Noveljic -
>>>
>>> First, being in the government, we have a "bean counter" that really
>>> doesn't understand Oracle and Oracle sales-people, doing the licensing
>>> agreements. Somehow my Center got dinged for 56 cores when we only had 16
>>> at that time. We currently have an Unlimited License Agreement for Oracle
>>> EE, and three other components (like Advanced security).
>>>
>>> But when I migrate things to Amazon, I'm going to go with the SE2
>>> option. That alone and using their license, combined with the minimal IO,
>>> should keep our costs around $1,000/month. The Amazon configuration I've
>>> been looking at would be the db.m1.medium, for 70 hours of uptime
>>> (availability) per week. Since we are for internal use only, and US
>>> Government, we don't need to be accessible during non-duty hours. That
>>> helps on the cost quite a bit also. If I don't retire next year, that
>>> Amazon configuration would limit my ability to do system work over the
>>> weekends, but oh well.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 10:52 AM Noveljic Nenad <
>>> nenad.noveljic_at_vontobel.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Bill,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Your database server has 4TB of mirrored storage, 4 CPU cores and 32GB
>>> RAM. As you mentioned that your licensing fee is $160’000, I’m guessing
>>> that you use Enterprise Edition with some expensive options on top of it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sorry for being nosy, but I couldn’t resist asking how did you manage to
>>> get the equivalent PaaS from Amazon for just $1000/month? If you don’t mind
>>> asking, are the licenses included in that price as well? Would you happen
>>> to know the name of the Amazon class and deployment?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nenad
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> https://nenadnoveljic.com/blog
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Bill Ferguson <wbfergus_at_gmail.com>
>>> *Sent:* Mittwoch, 5. Juni 2019 14:53
>>> *To:* Noveljic Nenad <nenad.noveljic_at_vontobel.com>
>>> *Cc:* oracle-l-freelists <oracle-l_at_freelists.org>
>>> *Subject:* Re: New instance(s) setup question
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Good points, which I failed to mention in my original post (since I
>>> thought it was already overly wordy). The number of people allowed to
>>> access the server is a small group of 5 people (most of which will be
>>> retiring), and all of the users only access the database(s) through Apex.
>>> We may also be migrating to the Amazon cloud later this year, depending on
>>> funding, as that should cost us less than $1,000/month, but we are also
>>> committed to a current Oracle cost of over $160,000 just for this year, so
>>> the bean-counters need to figure out how and where to get the money.
>>> Government work is so fun. :)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 6:47 AM Noveljic Nenad <
>>> nenad.noveljic_at_vontobel.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Bill,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Having both test and production running on the same hardware, you
>>> obviously won’t have a possibility to test the impact of the operating
>>> system (OS) patches and upgrades on the databases before applying them in
>>> the production environment.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> You can partially mitigate this problem with the virtualization, where
>>> you can patch every guest OS separately. I’ve been using MS Hyper-V (see
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V ) for years and it has proven as
>>> a really good virtualization platform for MS SQL Server databases. However,
>>> I don’t have any experience with operating Oracle databases on Windows.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Another advantage of the virtualization is a better isolation of the
>>> production databases from the security point of view. What I mean by that
>>> is if the test and production databases are running in the same OS
>>> environment people having access to the test databases could abuse some
>>> database features or security leaks to gain the access to the production
>>> databases.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nenad
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> https://nenadnoveljic.com/blog
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org> *On
>>> Behalf Of *Bill Ferguson
>>> *Sent:* Mittwoch, 5. Juni 2019 14:25
>>> *To:* oracle-l-freelists <oracle-l_at_freelists.org>
>>> *Subject:* New instance(s) setup question
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi all -
>>>
>>> Probably pretty basic, but a quick question for a new installation.
>>> Oracle pricing has really gotten out of hand, and my Center is drastically
>>> downsizing everything to save on costs. We also have several security
>>> things to address, and multiple people retiring in the next year or so, so
>>> we also have an emphasis on getting things simplified and documented for
>>> fairly new and inexperienced SysAdmins, DBA and devs.
>>>
>>> Anyway, the SysAdmin has setup a new server for me to migrate all of the
>>> Oracle stuff to. It is an
>>>
>>> Intel Xeon Silver-4112 2.60 GHz Socket/Processor with four (4) cores
>>> and 32 GB of Memory, running Windows Server 2016 Standard.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The C: (SYSTEM) drive is a mirrored volume consisting of two 1TB SSD
>>> drives with NTFS space of 884 GB. The E: (APP) drive is a mirrored volume
>>> consisting of two 4TB SATA Enterprise drives with NTFS space of 3.45 TB.
>>>
>>> Now my question is How to get Oracle setup on just this one machine,
>>> with both my production and development databases. Should I go with two
>>> separate installs (instances), or just go with the multi-tenant and have
>>> two pluggable databases? The production database is roughly 1GB in size,
>>> with maybe 3-4 users per day, and a total of around 150 users, so
>>> performance and throughput, I/O, etc. are extremely minimal. But with
>>> myself (hopefully) retiring within a year, and my current backup seeming to
>>> be out of her league and not being very motivated to pick up the reins and
>>> charge ahead, I want to keep as much as I can, as simple as I can (so I
>>> have less documentation to write).
>>>
>>> At this point in time, I don't have much confidence that she'll be up to
>>> the task of taking over if I do retire, especially if I pick the more
>>> complicated maintenance installation option. So I'm faced with the prospect
>>> of two installations, which is what we currently have with two separate
>>> servers. Or, I could go with the multi-tenant option and have two pluggable
>>> databases. But that approach has me worried about future upgrades, etc.
>>> That will add a whole new level of "stuff" she'll have to learn and for me
>>> to document. I'm also worried about availability in case somehow the root
>>> container gets hosed and she need to perform a reinstall or anything else
>>> that would probably bury her technically.
>>>
>>> Any opinions other than hiring someone with more motivation and more
>>> experience? We are a government agency, so hiring somebody with the skills
>>> at our pay scale is pretty far-fetched, especially when management doesn't
>>> think we deserve what little pay we do get. Thanks.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> -- Bill Ferguson
>>>
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>>>
>>> -- Bill Ferguson
>>>
>>>
>>> Important Notice
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>>> the right not to execute orders and instructions transmitted by e-mail at
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>>> Vontobel Holding Ltd. and any of its affiliates (hereinafter collectively
>>> referred to as "Vontobel Group") for any damages resulting from e-mail use
>>> is excluded. You are advised that urgent and time sensitive messages should
>>> not be sent by e-mail and if verification is required please request a
>>> printed version. Please note that all e-mail communications to and from the
>>> Vontobel Group are subject to electronic storage and review by Vontobel
>>> Group. Unless stated to the contrary and without prejudice to any
>>> contractual agreements between you and Vontobel Group which shall prevail
>>> in any case, e-mail-communication is for informational purposes only and is
>>> not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any
>>> financial instrument or as an official confirmation of any transaction.
>>> The legal basis for the processing of your personal data is the
>>> legitimate interest to develop a commercial relationship with you, as well
>>> as your consent to forward you commercial communications. You can exercise,
>>> at any time and under the terms established under current regulation, your
>>> rights. If you prefer not to receive any further communications, please
>>> contact your client relationship manager if you are a client of Vontobel
>>> Group or notify the sender. Please note for an exact reference to the
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>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> -- Bill Ferguson
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -- Bill Ferguson
>>
>

-- 
-- Bill Ferguson


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