How Oracle license is calculated in virtual machine vmware

There are two ways to compute Oracle License: By number of users and number of CPUs. These are calculated by CPU as follows:

License Number = The number of CPU cores * Core Factor

One of the core Factor can refer to the official document Oracle Processor Core Factor.

If Oracle is installed on VMware, is it also calculated in this way? In other words, is Oracle's license calculation on virtual machine VMware calculated according to the allocation of CPU cores? With regard to Oracle license calculations on virtual machines, Oracle introduces the following Soft partitioning (soft partitioning) and hard partitioning (hard partition) concepts (see below), and explicitly stipulates that VMware is a soft partition, and stipulates that soft partitioning is not permitted as a means to determine or limit the number of software licenses required for any G Iven server.

In other words, on a physical machine, if the following, virtual a Linux server to do Oracle Database server, virtual another Windows server to do SQL Server server, the physical machine has 2 physical CPUs, each 4 Core, Evenly distributed to both servers, at which point Oracle's license calculation is

License number = 2* 4*0.5= 4 instead of License number = 1*4*0.5= 2.

In other words, whether it is allocating two cores, four cores, multi-core to the Oracle database server, the Oracle license calculation is not based on the assigned kernel number, but on the physical machine CPU core.

This is unreasonable, but there is no way. It's not clear why Oracle calculates this license on VMware. It may be in the business strategy, or it may be in the fight against business opponents.

Http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/partitioning-070609.pdf

Oracle Partitioning Policy

"Partitioning" occurs the CPUs on a server are separated to individual sections where each section acts as a Separa Te system. Sometimes this is called "segmenting." There are several hardware and software virtualization technologies-available that deliver partitioning capabilities Varying degree of resource allocation flexibility.

The purpose of this policy document are to define which of these partitioning technologies are deemed to being Soft, Hard or an Oracle Trusted Partition, and under what conditions Oracle permits them as a means to determine or limit the number of or Acle Processor licenses required for a given server, i.e., to license a sub-capacity the total physical cores as a excepti On from the contractual Oracle Processor definition. Oracle may modify the definitions and conditions specified in this document from time to time.

There are two main types of partitioning available:

Soft Partitioning:

Soft partitioning segments the operating system using OS resource managers. The operating system limits the number of CPUs where an Oracle database are running by creating areas where CPU a Re allocated to applications within the same operating system. This is a flexible way of managing data processing resources since the CPU capacity can be changed fairly, as easily ional resource is needed.

Examples of such partitioning type Include:solaris 9 Resource containers, AIX workload Manager, HP Process Resource manag Er, Affinity Management, Oracle VM, and VMware

Soft partitioning is isn't permitted as a means to determine or limit the number of software

Licenses required for any given server.

See more highlights of this column: http://www.bianceng.cnhttp://www.bianceng.cn/Servers/virtualization/