Re: Alternative to Oracle support

From: Paul Drake <drak0nian_at_yahoo.com>
Date: 11 Feb 2003 22:50:31 -0800
Message-ID: <1ac7c7b3.0302112250.58926e7f@posting.google.com>

mlouie_at_transzap.com (Margaret) wrote in message news:<c3e1b2d3.0302111011.32ec5540_at_posting.google.com>...
> Are there any alternatives to paying Oracle for support (any 3rd
> parties offering support?). We have an 8 CPU 2-year license for Oracle
> Enterprise and Oracle wants $35,200 per year for support and upgrades
> and won't allow monthly payments of that (has to be paid all at once).
> For a startup company such as us, this is not small change.
>
> Margaret
> mlouie_at_transzap.com

Margaret,

Here is one alternative:

you've hit a bug - the instance is throwing ORA-00600 errors. you don't have a good rollback point - the corruption was not discovered until after your 5 day tape rotation had already been over-written.
the app is in production - and higher-ups are requesting status reports hourly.

Are you going to forgo oracle support just to save the cost?

I'd much rather downgrade the # of CPUs and pay the maintenance and support.
8.1.7 is off support this year, 9.2 is off of support in 2005. you're going to need to upgrade to stay on supported releases, most likely.

Are you sure that the databases that are housed on the 8 cpu server could not have gotten by on a 4 CPU server that used Standard Edition?

That box must be pretty well fed by an extremely high-end storage system, and you must have at least 16 Gb of ram in that box, multiple gigabit ethernet cards, multiple fibre channel host bus adapters on multiple independent access paths, and a damn good (expensive) SAN for backup/restore/recovery.

If not, trash the 8 CPU license and downgrade to a supportable per CPU license.

just my opinion.
You don't want to be responsible for paying the back fees in order to re-up your Oracle Support contract. don't run a production database without it.

Pull in other vendors if you need leverage with the Oracle Salesperson, think about using other products, such as PostGreSQL, Informix, MS SQL. Whatever provides the right roi while still being supportable.

Paul Received on Wed Feb 12 2003 - 00:50:31 CST