Licensing Oracle on Amazon EC2, RDS and Microsoft Azure now twice as expensive!

Transcription

1 Licensing Oracle on Amazon EC2, RDS and Microsoft Azure now twice as expensive! Authors: Adrian Cristache and Andra Tarata This whitepaper provides an overview of the changes in Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment. It explains how to count the required number of s in Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and Microsoft Azure, how to differentiate between virtual cores, vcpus, physical cores and more.

2 Contents Introduction... 3 Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment Policy... 4 Previous Policy... 5 How to count the required number of s under the previous policy?... 6 New Policy... 7 How to count the required number of s under the current policy?... 9 Different Instance Types and their related vcpus What are Virtual Cores and why do they matter? Comparison for Amazon Web Services: Counting Virtual Cores vs. vcpus Comparison for Microsoft Azure: Counting Virtual Cores vs. vcpus Conclusion

3 Introduction More and more end users are planning on or have already moved to a cloud computing environment. Each cloud computing environment comes with its specific restrictions and/or different ways of counting the required number of Oracle s. As of January 23rd, 2017, Oracle Corporation changed its licensing policies for the so called Authorized Cloud Environments. Initially, Oracle stated that for the Authorized Cloud Environments (including Amazon Web Services Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) and Microsoft Azure Platform) end users would need to consider each virtual core as a physical core (and multiply the amount of virtual cores by the Processor Core Factor of 0.5) to determine the number of Processors that were required to be d. As of January 23rd, 2017, the new Oracle licensing policies, in which different counting methodologies are applied for Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and Microsoft Azure, are as follows: Amazon EC2 and RDS - End users are required to count two vcpus (virtual Central Processing Unit) as equivalent to one Oracle Processor if hyper-threading is enabled - End users are required to count one vcpu as equivalent to one Oracle Processor if hyperthreading is not enabled. Microsoft Azure - End users are required to count one Azure CPU Core as equivalent to one Oracle Processor. Full details of Oracle s licensing policy on the Authorized Cloud Environments can be found here. This change in licensing policy does support Oracle s Cloud Strategy by making its own IaaS and PaaS Cloud Services more commercially attractive than the Cloud Services offered by its competitors. This whitepaper provides an overview of the changes for licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment. It explains how to count the required number of s in Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and Microsoft Azure, how to differentiate between virtual cores, vcpus, physical cores and more. 3

4 Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment Policy Oracle s Technology programs (mainly covering Database and Middleware programs) can be d by different metrics, including Named User (Plus) and Processor. The Named User Plus metric is used in environments where users and/or devices can be easily identified and counted. Named User Plus includes both human individuals and non-human operated devices. All human individuals and non-human operated devices that are (directly or indirectly) accessing the program must be d. A non-human operated device can be many things, such as a temperature-monitoring device or other types of sensors. It is important to note that if the device is operated by a person, then this person must be d and not the device. Under the Named User Plus model, there is (almost always) a minimum amount of Named User Plus s per Processor for the different Oracle programs that needs to be met at all times. As such, the hardware on which the software is installed is relevant as well to determine the required number of Named User Plus s! The Processor metric is mostly used in environments where software users cannot easily be identified or counted, such as with Internet-based applications or environments in which the number of users is high (e.g. production and DR environments). Processor s are therefore typically used in environments for which it is more cost-effective to by Processor s instead of Named User Plus s. All processors on which the Oracle programs are installed and/or running must be d. The required number of Processor s is determined by the amount of physical cores of the physical servers (and its CPU type). In case the Oracle software is running in a public cloud environment, the above listed licensing models do immediately represent an issue, as your Oracle installation could be running on any of the thousands of servers owned by your cloud provider. In public cloud environments it is therefore either impossible or unrealistic to count the physcial amount of cores of all the servers on which the Oracle software is installed and/or running. For this reason, Oracle introduced the so called Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment policy in 2010 for Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and Microsoft Azure. 4

5 Previous Policy Until January 23rd, 2017, end users were required to count each virtual core as a physical core, in case the Oracle programs were deployed on Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and/or Microsoft Azure. This number of cores would then need to be multiplied by the applicable core factor as per Oracle s Processor Core Factor Table, to determine the required number of s. This policy applied to all Oracle programs available on a Processor metric. In addition, the licensing policy further specified: - When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One, Standard Edition 2, or Standard Edition in the product name, the pricing was based on the size of the instance. - Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and/or Microsoft Azure instances with 4 or fewer virtual cores were counted as 1 socket, which was considered equivalent to a processor. - For Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and/or Microsoft Azure instances with more than 4 virtual cores, every 4 virtual cores used (rounded up to the closest multiple of 4) equated to a licensing requirement of 1 socket. - Oracle Database Standard Edition could only be d on Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and/or Microsoft Azure instances with up to 16 virtual cores. - Oracle Standard Edition One, Standard Edition 2 could only be d on Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and/or Microsoft Azure instances with up to 8 virtual cores. 5

6 How to count the required number of s under the previous policy? Under the old policy, the required number of s was counted differently than they are counted today. Below you will find two examples of how the required number of Processor s were counted under the old Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment policy: Example 1: For Database Enterprise Edition on Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS or Microsoft Azure: Licensing Oracle Database Enterprise Edition on a single instance of 8 virtual cores (on Intel multicore chips) would require 8 * 0.5 = 4 processor s (each virtual core is considered equivalent to a physical core). Example 2: For Database Standard Edition on Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS or Microsoft Azure: For an instance containing 1 to 4 virtual cores, the number of Oracle Database Standard Edition s required will be 1 processor. On an instance with 5 to 8 virtual cores, two processor s would be needed, considering the fact that each processor socket has 4 processor cores (quad core processor). On the other hand, if one were to use one 4 virtual core instance and 4 single virtual core instances (total of 5 instances and 8 virtual cores), 5 processor s would be required, i.e., one processor for each of the Authorized Cloud Environment instances. 6

7 New Policy On the 23rd of January 2017, Oracle changed its Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment policy. As of this date, the following counting methodologies are applicable for Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and Microsoft Azure. Amazon EC2 and RDS: - If hyper-threading is enabled, end users are required to count two vcpus = one Oracle Processor - If hyper-threading is NOT enabled, end users are required to count one vcpu = one Oracle Processor Microsoft Azure: - End users are required to count one Azure CPU Core = one Oracle Processor. Under the old policy, the methodology applied to all Oracle programs available on a Processor metric. Under the new policy, the methodology is only applicable to a subset of Oracle s programs which can be found here. Under the old policy, the number of virtual cores had to be multiplied with the applicable core factor as per Oracle s Processor Core Factor Table. Under Oracle s new policy, this core factor is no longer applied. In addition, the new policy further specifies: - When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One, Standard Edition 2, or Standard Edition in the product name, the pricing is based on the size of the instance. o For Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS instances with four or fewer Amazon vcpus are counted as 1 socket, which is considered equivalent to an Oracle processor. o For Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS instances with more than four Amazon vcpus, every four Amazon vcpus used (rounded up to the nearest multiple of four) equate to a licensing requirement of one socket. o For Microsoft Azure instances with two or fewer Azure CPU Cores are counted as 1 socket, which is considered equivalent to an Oracle processor. o For Microsoft Azure instances with more than two Azure CPU Cores, every two Azure CPU Cores used (rounded up to the nearest multiple of two) equate to a licensing requirement of one socket. 7

8 - Oracle Database Standard Edition may only be d on Amazon EC2 or Amazon RDS instances up to 16 Amazon vcpus. - Oracle Database Standard Edition may only be d on Microsoft Azure up to eight Azure CPU Cores. - Oracle Standard Edition One and Standard Edition 2 may only be d on Amazon EC2 or Amazon RDS instances up to eight Amazon vcpus or four Azure CPU Cores. - Oracle Standard Edition One and Standard Edition 2 may only be d on Microsoft Azure instances up to four Azure CPU Cores. 8

9 How to count the required number of s under the current policy? Under the new policy, the required number of s is counted differently than before. Below you will find an example of how to count the required number of Processor s under the new (current) Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment policy: Example: Oracle Database Enterprise Edition Licensing Oracle Database Enterprise Edition on a single instance of four Amazon vcpus, where Hyper- Threading is enabled, will require two processor s (two Amazon vcpus are considered equivalent to an Oracle Processor ). Hyper-threading (officially called Hyper-Threading Technology or HT Technology, and abbreviated as HTT or HT) is Intel's proprietary simultaneous multithreading (SMT) implementation used to improve parallelization of computations (doing multiple tasks at once) performed on x86 microprocessors. In other words, Hyper-Threading is the capacity of Intel s processors to execute 2 sets of instructions at the same time. Intel s website provides information on which particular server processors are capable of Hyper-Threading, (available here). In Oracle s traditional licensing model, the minimum required number of Named User Plus s (e.g. 25 Named User Plus per Processor for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition) remains applicable for Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and/or Microsoft Azure. In addition, for Oracle Linux programs each instance within an Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS and/or Microsoft Azure is counted as a System. The so called Basic Limited and Premier Limited support is not available for instances greater than eight Amazon vcpus or four Azure CPU Cores. To conclude, Oracle s acquired under Unlimited License Agreement (ULA) may still be used in Authorized Cloud Environments, but Oracle states that end users are NOT allowed to include such deployment in the certification at the end of the ULA term. Tip End users with an Unlimited License Agreement should at all times make sure that, before entering into a ULA and/or before they move to a public cloud provider, they have the appropriate non-standard language with Oracle agreed and included in their agreement(s). This will allow them to still certify such cloud deployment and helps to avoid the possibility to become non-compliant the day they certify their deployment. 9

10 Different Instance Types and their related vcpus In case an end user launches an instance in a public cloud environment, the specific selected Instance Type determines the specific hardware of the host used to run the instance. Each instance type offers different compute, memory, and storage capabilities and is grouped in instance families based on these capabilities. The below table provides an overview of the instance types as offered by Amazon EC2, categorized by Current Generation Instances (best recommended for better performance) and Previous Generation Instances (recommended for users that optimized their applications around these instances and have yet to upgrade). Current Generation Instances: Instance Family General purpose Compute optimized Memory optimized Storage optimized Instance Types t2.nano t2.micro t2.small t2.medium t2.large t2.xlarge t2.2xlarge m4.large m4.xlarge m4.2xlarge m4.4xlarge m4.10xlarge m4.16xlarge m3.medium m3.large m3.xlarge m3.2xlarge c4.large c4.xlarge c4.2xlarge c4.4xlarge c4.8xlarge c3.large c3.xlarge c3.2xlarge c3.4xlarge c3.8xlarge r3.large r3.xlarge r3.2xlarge r3.4xlarge r3.8xlarge r4.large r4.xlarge r4.2xlarge r4.4xlarge r4.8xlarge r4.16xlarge x1.16xlarge x1.32xlarge i2.xlarge i2.2xlarge i2.4xlarge i2.8xlarge d2.xlarge d2.2xlarge d2.4xlarge d2.8xlarge Accelerated computing p2.xlarge p2.8xlarge p2.16xlarge g2.2xlarge g2.8xlarge 10

11 Previous Generation Instances: Instance Family General purpose Compute optimized Memory optimized Storage optimized Accelerated computing Micro instances Previous Generation Instance Types m1.small m1.medium m1.large m1.xlarge c1.medium c1.xlarge cc2.8xlarge m2.xlarge m2.2xlarge m2.4xlarge cr1.8xlarge hi1.4xlarge hs1.8xlarge cg1.4xlarge t1.micro Each Instance Type is in essence a Virtual Machine (VM) which has one or more vcpus assigned. The Operating System of the Virtual Machine sees each vcpu as a single physical CPU core. Depending on the Instance Type selected, you will automatically receive a certain amount of vcpus assigned in a specific hour. The instances accrue CPU Credits when they are idle, and use CPU credits when they are active. Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) provides persistent block storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud. Each Amazon EBS volume is automatically replicated within its Availability Zone to protect users from component failure, offering high availability and durability. EBS optimized instances deliver dedicated bandwidth to Amazon EBS, with options between 500 Mbps and 10,000 Mbps, depending on the used instance type. 11

12 The below table provides an overview of the number of vcpus assigned to the different Amazon EC2 Instance Types listed above: T2 Model vcpu CPU Credits / hour Mem (GiB) Storage t2.nano EBS-Only t2.micro EBS-Only t2.small EBS-Only t2.medium EBS-Only t2.large EBS-Only t2.xlarge EBS-Only t2.2xlarge EBS-Only M4 Model vcpu Mem (GiB) SSD Storage (GB) Dedicated EBS Bandwidth (Mbps) m4.large 2 8 m4.xlarge 4 16 m4.2xlarge 8 32 m4.4xlarge m4.10xlarge m4.16xlarge EBSonly EBSonly EBSonly EBSonly EBSonly EBSonly ,000 2,000 4,000 10,000 12

13 M3 Model vcpu Mem (GiB) SSD Storage (GB) m3.medium x 4 m3.large x 32 m3.xlarge x 40 m3.2xlarge x 80 C4 Model vcpu Mem (GiB) Storage Dedicated EBS Bandwidth (Mbps) c4.large c4.xlarge c4.2xlarge 8 15 c4.4xlarge c4.8xlarge EBS- Only EBS- Only EBS- Only EBS- Only EBS- Only ,000 2,000 4,000 C3 Model vcpu Mem (GiB) SSD Storage (GB) c3.large x 16 c3.xlarge x 40 c3.2xlarge x 80 c3.4xlarge x 160 c3.8xlarge x 320 X1 Model vcpu Mem (GiB) SSD Storage (GB) Dedicated EBS Bandwidth (Mbps) x1.32xlarge 128 1,952 2 x 1,920 10,000 x1.16xlarge x 1,920 5,000 13

14 R4 Model vcpu Mem (GiB) Networking Performance SSD Storage (GB) r4.large Up to 10 Gigabit EBS-Only r4.xlarge Up to 10 Gigabit EBS-Only r4.2xlarge 8 61 Up to 10 Gigabit EBS-Only r4.4xlarge Up to 10 Gigabit EBS-Only r4.8xlarge Gigabit EBS-Only r4.16xlarge Gigabit EBS-Only R3 Model vcpu Mem (GiB) SSD Storage (GB) r3.large x 32 r3.xlarge x 80 r3.2xlarge x 160 r3.4xlarge x 320 r3.8xlarge x 320 P2 Model GPUs vcpu Mem (GiB) GPU Memory (GiB) p2.xlarge p2.8xlarge p2.16xlarge G2 Model GPUs vcpu Mem (GiB) SSD Storage (GB) g2.2xlarge x 60 g2.8xlarge x

15 F1 Model FPGAs vcpu Mem (GiB) SSD Storage (GB) f1.2xlarge f1.16xlarge x 960 I2 Model vcpu Mem (GiB) Storage (GB) i2.xlarge x 800 SSD i2.2xlarge x 800 SSD i2.4xlarge x 800 SSD i2.8xlarge x 800 SSD D2 Model vcpu Mem (GiB) Storage (GB) d2.xlarge x 2000 HDD d2.2xlarge x 2000 HDD d2.4xlarge x 2000 HDD d2.8xlarge HDD How the physical cores are presented in a public cloud environment depends on the specific cloud provider. For Amazon WebServices: - Each vcpu is associated with a single thread presented from Intel hyper-threading, so 2 vcpus equal 1 physical core. For Microsoft Azure Services: - Each vcpu is associated with a single physical core, since Azure does not use hyper-threading. 15

16 What are Virtual Cores and why do they matter? For each processor core that is physically present in a physical server, the operating system addresses two or more virtual (logical) cores. As such there is no physical separation in the server hardware. For example, in case you have a quad core Intel Xeon processor capable of Hyper-Threading, there are in total 4 physical cores and 8 virtual cores (or 8 threads). The below table provides an overview of the amount of virtual cores applicable for Amazon EC2 Instances and Amazon RDS Instances: EC2 Instance Type Virtual Core Count EC2 Instance Type Virtual Core Count EC2 Instance Type Virtual Core Count t1.micro 1 m4.10xlarge 20 r4.large 1 t2.micro 1 m4.16xlarge 32 r4.xlarge 2 t2.small 1 c1.medium 2 r4.2xlarge 4 t2.medium 2 c1.xlarge 8 r4.4xlarge 8 t2.large 2 cc2.8xlarge 16 r4.8xlarge 16 t2.xlarge 4 cg1.4xlarge 8 r4.16xlarge 32 t2.2xlarge 8 cr1.8xlarge 16 r3.large 1 m1.small 1 c3.large 1 r3.xlarge 2 m1.medium 1 c3.xlarge 2 r3.2xlarge 4 m1.large 2 c3.2xlarge 4 r3.4xlarge 8 m1.xlarge 4 c3.4xlarge 8 r3.8xlarge 16 m2.xlarge 2 c3.8xlarge 16 p2.xlarge 2 m2.2xlarge 4 c4.large 1 p2.8xlarge 16 m2.4xlarge 8 c4.xlarge 2 p2.16xlarge 32 m3.medium 1 c4.2xlarge 4 i2.xlarge 2 m3.large 1 c4.4xlarge 8 i2.2xlarge 4 m3.xlarge 2 c4.8xlarge 18 i2.4xlarge 8 m3.2xlarge 4 hi1.4xlarge 8 i2.8xlarge 16 m4.large 1 hs1.8xlarge 8 d2.xlarge 2 m4.xlarge 2 g2.2xlarge 16 d2.2xlarge 4 m4.2xlarge 4 x1.16xlarge 32 d2.4xlarge 8 m4.4xlarge 8 x1.32xlarge 64 d2.8xlarge 18 16

17 Comparison for Amazon Web Services: Counting Virtual Cores vs. vcpus In order to illustrate the licensing impact of Oracle s change in the Licensing Oracle Software in Cloud Computing Environments policy, the below table provides an overview of the required number of s for an Amazon EC2 of instance type t2.xlarge (having a capacity of 2 virtual cores and 4 vcpus) as per the old policy as well as per the new policy: Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment Authorized Cloud Environments Oracle Database Programs Virtual Cores vcpus Old Policy (until January 23rd, 2017) Hyper- Threading enabled Hyper- Threading disabled New Policy (after January 23rd, 2017) Hyper- Threading enabled Hyper- Threading disabled Conclusion Oracle Database Standard Edition One 2 (4 if Hyper- Threading is disabled) 4 No price change Amazon Web Services (AWS) - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Oracle Database Standard Edition Two Oracle Database Standard Edition Oracle Database Enterprise Edition 2 (4 if Hyper- Threading is disabled) 2 (4 if Hyper- Threading is disabled) 2 (4 if Hyper- Threading is disabled) virtual cores = 2 physical cores x 0.5 (core factor) = 2 virtual cores = 2 physical cores x 0.5 (core factor) = 4 virtual CPUs = 2 Processor 4 virtual CPUs = 4 Processor s No price change No price change Price increased with 100% - 200% As a result of the above comparison, it is clear that from a licensing and pricing perspective, the change in Oracle s licensing policy has a huge impact (100% to 200% increase) on Oracle Database Enterprise Edition programs deployed on Amazon Web Services. The policy change does not have an impact on the deployment of the Oracle Database Standard Edition programs. Comment Please note that for Amazon Web Services each vcpu is a hyperthread of an Intel Xeon core, except for the Instance Types T2 and m3.medium Source: 17

18 Comparison for Microsoft Azure: Counting Virtual Cores vs. vcpus In order to illustrate the licensing impact of Oracle s change in the Licensing Oracle Software in Cloud Computing Environments policy, the below table provides an overview of the required number of s for a Microsoft Azure instance with 4 Azure CPU Cores as per the old policy and the required number of s for a Microsoft Azure instance with 4 Azure CPU cores as per the new policy. Authorized Cloud Environments Oracle Database Programs Virtual Cores vcpus Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment Old Policy (until January 23rd, 2017) New Policy (after January 23rd, 2017) Conclusion Oracle Database Standard Edition One 4 4 No price change Oracle Database Standard Edition Two 4 4 No price change Microsoft Azure Platform Oracle Database Standard Edition 4 4 No price change Oracle Database Enterprise Edition virtual cores = 4 physical cores x 0.5 (core factor) = 2 Processor 4 Azure CPU Cores = 4 Processor s Price increased with 100% As a result of the above comparison, it is clear that from a licensing and pricing perspective, the change in Oracle s licensing policy has a huge impact (100% increase) with regards to the deployment of the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition programs in case they are deployed on Microsoft Azure. The policy change does not have an impact on the deployment of the Oracle Database Standard Edition programs. 18

19 Conclusion As a result of Oracle s change in its Licensing Oracle Software in the Cloud Computing Environment policy, end users do require two to four times more s in case they deploy the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition on Amazon AWS, Amazon RDS or Microsoft Azure. End users no longer need to count the number of virtual cores to determine the required number of Processor s, instead they need to count as per the below explanation: Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS: - two vcpus are equivalent to one Oracle Processor if hyper-threading is enabled - one vcpu is equivalent to one Oracle Processor if hyper-threading is not enabled Microsoft Azure: - one Azure CPU Core is equivalent to one Oracle Processor. Before you make the decision to put your Oracle Database and/or Middleware programs on a public cloud provider, make sure that you check your contractual terms and conditions, check your virtual cores, vcpus and physical core counts to avoid unexpected licensing surprises. End users will, in the near future, need to make a decision if they want to migrate their on-premises Database installations to 12cR1 (for which the extended support will elapse in July 2021) or move to the Oracle Database Cloud Services to benefit from the newest release (2) of 12c. 19

20 About the author - Adrian Cristache, Technical Specialist "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today."- James Dean Adrian is one of B-lay's Senior Technical Analysts. In his previous role as Senior Technical Analyst in Oracle's License Management Services department, Adrian was involved in more than 1000 customer engagements. He is now using his Software Asset and License Management experience and knowledge to provide valuable licensing advice, helping end users to maximize the efficiency of their software entitlements. Adrian holds a master degree in IT - Database development for business support - from the Academy of Economic Studies of Bucharest. Contact Adrian: adrian.cristache@b-lay.com About the author - Andra Tarata, Licensing Specialist "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among stars!"- Les Brown Andra has been working in the Software Licensing industry for the last 8 years, analyzing and understanding licensing business practices & product development from multiple software vendors and helping clients to better manage their software entitlements. Andra leverages her experiences of working within Oracle s License Management Services team to educate, equip and enable end-users to understand their enterprise software entitlements. Andra holds a bachelor degree in Project Management from the National School of Political and Administrative Studies of Bucharest. Contact Andra: andra.tarata@b-lay.com We share our knowledge, so you can focus on the facts! Do you want to know more about different related management topics, we have a selection of white papers available through If you are in need of extra expertise and a structured approach, feel free to contact B-lay. We will help you make software compliance an exciting opportunity to improve your business! About B-lay B-lay is a specialist in software management and provides services around software compliance, software audits, software asset management tools and insight in software spend. Our services offer organizations worldwide insight into the risks associated with software s, help prevent compliance issues and help create considerable cost savings by optimizing their licensing position. B-lay was founded in 2008 and has offices in the Netherlands, Romania and the US. B-lay BV Maliebaan CG Utrecht The Netherlands info@b-lay.com B-lay BV. All rights reserved.