Oracle licensing is a science and there is so much to it . In this post we will discuss the server virtualization and how organizations can use Oracle VM to reduce the licensing cost.
Oracle Technology licenses are mainly based on machine's processors. Virtualization technologies are getting popular and are used to partition machines and give only subset of processors to Oracle technologies to lower the licensing cost.
e.g. If you have a server with 30 CPU's and you install Oracle Database Enterprise Edition and Oracle Application Server Enterprise Edition , you have to pay for all 30 CPU's . However you may partition the server into two virtual machines and each one has 15 CPU's .
Surprisingly Oracle will still not recognize this partition and you still have to pay on all 30 CPU's.
The partitioning has to be done through a certified virtualization vendor. E.g. Oracle VM . The most popular virtualization vendor VMware is not recognized by Oracle for licensing purpose . The only exception on (x86servers with Intel chip) is Oracle VM .
Oracle VM again offers two types of partitioning 1) Soft partitioning 2) Hard partitioning. Only Hard partitioning is the recognizable licensing boundary by Oracle.
Oracle also certifies other virtualization technologies on non X86 servers e.g. Solaris Containers on SPARC chips , IBM's LPARs and HP's npar , vpar on PA processors. On X86 servers (which are most common these days) Oracle VM is the only choice.
Note:- Oracle licensing is ever changing and it is always best to confirm with Oracle before making any design decisions.
