Oracle licensing

Gerry is correct, Oracle *explicitly* does NOT support BIOS core disabling for the purposes of Oracle core licensing, since the cores can easily be re-enabled after initial installation config.  Likewise, core restriction via VMware/Hyper-V/KVM are also NOT recognized for licensing purposes, for the same reason.   There are some customers  who have struck one-off side-deals with their Oracle reps to recognize BIOS core disabling, but there is not an official lic. policy allowing this.  To avoid future audits = *extremely* expensive Oracle lic. "true-ups" I wouldn't even suggest this option for customers to pursue unless they can get that side deal in writing from their Oracle reps.

To restrict cores for Oracle lic. purposes, one must either:

* use fixed lower core count/higher clockspeed processor models e.g. E5-2637v3 4C@3.5GHz
* use OracleVM, ie. Oracle's Xen-based hypervisor.  OracleVM implements a feature called "core binding" aka "core pinning", which locks specific CPU core serial #'s to VMs, so one can create e.g. 2C VMs which cannot be modified, i.e. cannot add CPU's without destroying/recreating the VM from scratch, and therefore are recognized for Oracle lic. purposes.

From a market best practice perspective, many customers who've already standardized on VMware/Hyper-V etc. simply opt to pay the full core count cost for the system, then load as many Oracle workloads as possible onto the system/cluster, however for customers with smaller Oracle installs, OracleVM is a quite useful to control core costs, and has quite low compute perf overhead.

Peter Bailey
ET- Linux/Solaris/Oracle
512.800.9792
________________________________________
From: Gonzalez, Gerry
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 7:47 AM
To: Drunen, Marcel van; Sharma10, Ashish; Akkalyoncu, Serhat; Blades-Tech; BladeMasters
Subject: RE: Is it possible for Dell to disable cores?

Dell - Internal Use - Confidential
All,

From my experience within my set of US Global accounts, Oracle does NOT sanction disabling cores on X86 systems to forego licensing cores…Yes, once the cores are disabled they are electrically isolated and can NOT be seen by the OS until the next reboot but Oracle ONLY allows certain x86 systems that support hard partitioning  as well as RISC and SPARC systems leveraging LPARs to support disabling cores…

That said, I do have an account that worked a deal with their Oracle rep but that is on an account by account basis…Speaking from experience, I attempted to leverage this arrangement at another account and they were audited and were told they would have to entitle ALL cores in their Dell servers whether they were turned on or off…Moral of the story…Let your account take the fight to Oracle and NOT you…Dell will NOT officially support this due to our relationship with Oracle and they advise to move the customer to OVM and OEL to mitigate licensing costs…however, most customers will NOT want to stand up another virtualized environment to satisfy Oracle licensing…

Attached is the Oracle document explaining how Oracle defines core partitioning as Soft or Hard…Dell would fall under the ‘Soft’ definition according to Oracle although Intel would support that when cores are turned off in our systems, they are electrically isolated and cannot be used until they are turned back on in the bios on a subsequent reboot…

This is one of the reasons Intel continues to build and provide low core count processors, so your approach of using 4C procs is the way to go…

Don’t want to ramble here (as this brings up OLD scars) but if you would like more information just let me know…

Thanks…

Gerry Gonzalez
Enterprise Domain Specialist - Global - SouthEast
Dell Enterprise Products and Solutions
305-274-8982 Office
305-987-4395 Cell
305-274-0503 Fax


How am I doing? Please contact my manager, Richard Schultze at Richard_Schultze@Dell.com<mailto:Richard_Schultze@Dell.com> with any feedback.



From: Drunen, Marcel van
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 7:14 AM
To: Sharma10, Ashish; Akkalyoncu, Serhat; Blades-Tech; BladeMasters
Subject: RE: Is it possible for Dell to disable cores?


Dell - Internal Use - Confidential
Hi Ashish,

This is news to me. Can we get an official statement from Oracle about that?

Using one of the frequency optimized CPU’s will be a better choice most of the time because of the higher frequency. If disabling cores is not allowed, than the CPU’s with the lowest amount of cores are the E5-2637v3 (@3.5 GHz) and E5-2623v3 (@3.0 GHz). Both have four cores, so if the customer has a 8-core license these will be the CPU’s of choice in a dual socket Intel system.

Kind regards,

Marcel van Drunen
Senior Manager EMEA HPC
Dell ESG
+31-206744313

From: Sharma10, Ashish
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 12:26 PM
To: Akkalyoncu, Serhat; Blades-Tech; BladeMasters
Subject: RE: Is it possible for Dell to disable cores?

Hi Serhat,

You can go and disable the cores in the bios and OS will see only the enabled cores.

One of my customer had taken a letter from Oracle that their licensing will be only for active cores and he was able to leverage this feature.



Thanks & Regards

Ashish Sharma
Enterprise Technologist
Dell |Enterprise Solution Organisation
+919833630569
Ashish_sharma10@dell.com<mailto:Ashish_sharma10@dell.com>



From: Akkalyoncu, Serhat
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 4:30 PM
To: Blades-Tech; BladeMasters
Subject: Is it possible for Dell to disable cores?


Dell - Internal Use - Confidential
Hi,

I have a RFP and in one of the requirements it says “There should be a possibility to disable physical cores in server”. Is it possible? Our customer will use these systems in Oracle deployment and so because of the core licensing they want to disable cores.

Best Regards,

Serhat Akkalyoncu
CSE (Customer Sales Engineer)
Dell | EMEA Emerging Markets / Turkey
Office : +90 216 570 8700, mobile : +90 532 426 2386, faks : +90 216 570 8798
e-mail :  serhat_akkalyoncu@dell.com<mailto:serhat_akkalyoncu@dell.com>
adress:  Icerenkoy mah. Askent sok. no:3/A Atasehir / Istanbul PK:34752 Turkey