Oracle Database Discussions

Hi there,

I have been an Oracle developer then DBA for many years, and in the last few years I have got more & more involved in licensing issues, so hopefully this is not a "newbie" question.

I have read the official Oracle "Software Investment Guide", and understand the user minimums and CPU count rules etc.

I had always assumed that unless you have a special "site wide" agreement, then every Oracle server needed to be licensed separately. However, a reseller is now telling me that a "named user plus" license on one server entitles that user to access Oracle on any number of additional servers, at no extra cost.

That seems too good to be true.

Consider the following examples:

Example 1: if customer A has 5 users and 3 servers (DEV, TEST & PROD), how many named user plus licenses do they require? Just 5 in total, or 5 per server, ie 15 total? (Assuming Standard Edition ONE, ie 5 "named user plus" minimum).

Note: answer from reseller was: "5 Named User Plus" required._

Example 2: if customer B has 15 users and 3 servers, do they require 15 NUP licenses in total, or 15 per server, ie 45 total?

Note: answer from reseller was: "15 Named User Plus" required._

Example 3: if customer C already has an "unlimited user" (ie CPU metric) license on their PROD server, and 5 internal users need access to 2 other (DEV & TEST) servers, what license is needed?

Note: answer from reseller was: "They don't need any new licenses. Unlimited users = unlimited users"._

If that is really the case, the following example shows what happens if you take that to the logical conclusion:

Example 4: if customer D has a web application that has a huge (eg 1 million+) number of users, and estimates that they need a server with 64 single-core CPUs to handle the load, that would require a 64 "unlimited user" CPU license for Oracle Enterprise Edition, which has a current "perpetual" price (https://shop.oracle.com) of £1,389,456

However, a single 2 CPU x Quad core (ie 8 core total) server can use Oracle Standard Edition ONE, with "unlimited" users for just £7,070

If I am really allowed to use this license on multiple servers, I could just buy 8 identical "small" servers, with just one "shared" £7,070 Oracle license, to get the same total of 64 CPU cores, ie the same processing power, and save over £1 million! Of course the customer would need to "load balance" across all 8 servers, but that is quite possible for many web applications, without needing to resort to using RAC.

So, is there a big loophole, or is this Oracle reseller mistaken?

Edited by: ymcp on 31-Mar-2010 01:40: updated to add replies from reseller