Oracle Database License Optimisation

As you may know this can be a highly risky area when it comes to Oracle licensing as the requirement from Oracle is for the whole VMware cluster to be fully licensed regardless of whether all the physical servers are running Oracle or not. However, there are ways to avoid this. Contact us for a more detailed discussion.

This can have an impact on your responsibilities with regards to licensing. Managing multiple contracts across several agencies can quite often lead to over licensing and should be checked in detail. It may even be worth renegotiating new contracts with Oracle.

This could make you a target for an Oracle audit if your organisation has recently been through a radical change. When such changes happen over-licensing can easily happen. Contracts would need to be ratified and amended accordingly and the process of aligning, consolidating and merging systems can often save a lot of money going forward if done properly. This could also be a pre-cursor to an Enterprise Agreement.

This can be an additional cost that you need include as Oracle counts all these types of personnel as requiring some type of licensing if they access data from the Oracle resource that you own.

As an example, Oracle would see all customers at an airport who check the arrivals/departure screens as customers of the airline or airport and the Oracle system would require the appropriate license. Very often providers using public kiosks and public vending machines are overlooked for licensing when supplying a service underpinned by Oracle software. In most cases such systems would need to be licensed by the processor metric to cater for unlimited user access.

We advise that you separate your Production/DR and non-Production systems as you can use cheaper metrics for non-Production. This could save money on licensing.

You may find there is a time when you want to move back to a standard contract which charges you for what you actually use. This may happen if you are part of a de-merger or if your usage of Oracle has reduced significantly over the years. There is a process you should follow which can save you a lot of ongoing costs and reduce your future risk of non-compliance if done correctly. Get it wrong and you could be in hot water.

There is a way and means to help remove this from being a thorn in your side. Bundled contracts are a way that Oracle protects its support base, but it should not be something that causes you to be out of pocket. Contact us for a chat around strategies to deal with this issue.

This may be something you might want to look into especially if you have large deployments and are not utilizing all of your hardware. Oracle’s Hard Partitioning policies allow you a mechanism to reduce licensing costs by leveraging certain technologies.

The way Oracle determines licensing in the cloud is different from on-premises deployments, license metrics move away from straight forward processor and core-based licensing model to VCPU. The amount of VCPU you need, (or OCPU if deploying on Oracle cloud), can depend on several factors including instance size and whether Hyperthreading is switched on or off.

Oracle tends to target customers with old metrics for audits as the rules on how these older metrics are deployed can be confusing and difficult to manage in today’s times. Some older metrics are beneficial to keep, with better minimums and the like whilst others are not. Determining, which is which can be a tricky process, do you keep them or migrate them to a more modern metric?

This is what is determined to be a ‘Hot Standby’ by Oracle and licensing for such deployments has to be like-for-like with the primary server, and that includes not just the Database licensing but also options and packs in the case of using Enterprise Edition. There are some exceptions to this rule, for instance the ‘Real Application Cluster’ option is exempt.

This is a tricky one that not many customers think about and can have expensive consequences especially if using Standard Edition family databases that are restricted to the number of physical processors located on the server. MCMs count as two sockets even though it may look like there is only one. If audited and your license is in breach it could force you to upgrade to Enterprise Edition or change the server the database is deployed on, both painful and expensive decisions. We will contact you for a confidential discussion on this topic.

This could be a way of drastically reducing the cost of your Oracle licensing requirement. If you don’t need the full power and flexibility of Enterprise Edition and all the options and packs, then there may be a case to reduce your footprint. The modern Standard Edition 2 database has the same fundamental structure as it’s big brother but has a thread restriction imposed. If this is of no hinderance then keep your options open.

How Oracle explains the Processor and core licensing policy is not simple. Not understanding the rules on how you need to license and what the exceptions are can result in your organisation drastically over-licensing or under-licensing, both major risks to your budget. Contact us if you need an interpreter.

This can have an impact on how you license your DR systems. so be aware. We will contact you for a confidential discussion on this topic.

These devices are licensed as if they are human operators and need to be counted as part of your license requirement.

If they do, then you should be aware of Oracle’s multiplexing rule which basically states that all users that are behind a generic user-id must be counted. For example, you may have a user id called ‘REPORTS’ which is used by several users. Those users must be individually counted as using the Oracle software and licensed accordingly if not licensed already.

Oracle Enterprise Edition options are typically switched on when the binaries are installed, and sometimes even inadvertently using them once or twice may be picked up in an audit, and quite often this may be classed as a ‘’false positive’’ as commercial usage has to be proven to require a license. This happens very often with Advanced Compression when the Data Pump Export function is used and also with the Advanced Security option. Don’t pay for options just because the Oracle Audit picked them up, it is up to you to prove they are not licensable. We have extensive experience helping customers with this. We can run a thorough check on your current and past usage of Oracle options and packs and compare your reported usage against what is actually being commercially used by your organisation.

Be warned this process can cause major headaches if you are audited. When you clone a database, you clone the history with it and this could include old packs and option data that was used in the past. Do this often enough and the history of past usage can spread throughout your Oracle deployments like wildfire leading to a massive accumulation of additional license requirements that you didn’t even know you had from the perspective of Oracle if you are audited. Don’t fall into this trap. can offer one on one confidential advice to remediate this scenario.

Oracle is aggressively pursuing customers who use Oracle Java, looking for support payable versions typically deployed through 3rd party applications. Although vendors are moving away from Oracle Java due to this risk this will take time so it would be prudent to check where your Oracle java is deployed and where it is being used. If used with Oracle then you may be covered by a ‘Restricted Usage’ right, but if not, beware. Also, be aware that if you are using old versions of Java in production via 3rd party apps that require no support cost, they could still be a risk to your organisation due to being unpatched from a security perspective. We can offer one on one confidential advice to remediate this scenario.

Oracle states that a license is applicable if the Oracle binaries are installed and/or running so you have to count all servers that have Oracle installed even if they are unplugged!

Remember that Oracle requires a license where the software is installed and/or running and as we know a migration may require multiple deployments at the source and target servers, or cloud as the case may be. How do you manage this process without having to purchase additional licenses? We will contact you for a confidential discussion on this topic.

Oracle provides term licenses and subscription options as well as perpetual licenses across the board. Understanding what you want and what you need and thinking about your long-term strategy will help you make the appropriate choices. A keen understanding on this subject will help you control your budget and reduce the risk of fallout after an audit. Understand your requirements and what are your best options going forward. We will contact you for a confidential discussion on this topic.

These Editions all have differing minimums and rules attached to them, and in some cases limitations on the number of physical sockets (processors) that your physical Server can have. This also flows into Cloud deployments and the limits on the number of VCPU that your instance can have depends on the Edition you use. Speak to us for more information.