Avoiding Oracle Cost Traps When Migrating to AWS
Nick Walter
Principal Architect & Cloud Practice Lead
House of Brick Technologies
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House of Brick
House of Brick Technologies, an OpsCompass company, helps customers with challenges deploying databases on- or off-
premise, whether on bare metal hardware, virtualized infrastructure or cloud-based models:
Compliance & Governance
• Database licensing
• Audit prep & defense
• Cloud operation tools
Architecture & Migration
• Database plan & design
• DB POCs & migrations
• Related HA, DR & BU
Database Modernization
• Database virt & cloud• Database replatforming
(Postgres/MySQL)• Database DevOps
Compliance & Governance
• Database licensing
• Audit prep & defense
• Cloud operation tools
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Oracle Would Really Prefer Customers Went to Oracle Cloud
Oracle Wants AWS to Seem Scary/Confusing/Expensive
• Licensing Cost Claims
• License Compliance Claims
• Supportability Claims
AWS is a great option for running Oracle workloads – If the Traps are Avoided
The Challenge
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The Licensing And Support Traps
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House of Brick consultants are not attorneys. Any advice given herein should be validated with appropriate legal representation.
Disclaimer
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• Licensing is Contractual
• Oracle Cannot Dictate Terms
• Contract is Surprisingly Ambiguous on Certain Areas
• Virtualization/Cloud
• CPU Disablement
• Contract Only Includes Certain Artifacts• Entire Agreement Clause Excludes Everything
Else
• Oracle Representatives Often Make Incorrect or Misleading Claims
Oracle Licensing101
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Oracle Licensing Metrics
Processor
• Tied to Number of
Hardware Processors in
Server Hosting the
Installation
• Common in Production
Environments
• Most Flexible
Named User Plus
(NUP)
• Tied to Number of
Users AND Hardware
Processors in Server
Hosting the Installation
• Common in Non-
Production
Environments
Unlimited License
Amendment (ULA)
• Unlimited Use of
Named Products
• Very Expensive
• Time Limited
• Converts to Processor
Licenses at End of Term
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Standard Processor-Based Licensing
Q. License Definitions and Rules
Processor: shall be defined as all processors where the Oracle programs are
installed and/or running. Programs licensed on a processor basis may be
accessed by your internal users (including agents and contractors) and by your third
party users. The number of required licenses shall be determined by multiplying the
total number of cores of the processor by a core processor licensing factor specified
on the Oracle Processor Core Factor Table which can be accessed at
http://oracle.com/contracts.
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Oracle Contract Artifacts
Oracle Document Contractual?
Technical Support Policies Yes
Processor Core Factor Table Yes
Ordering Documents Yes
Software Investment Guide No
Licensing Data Recovery Guide No
Technology Hosting No
Partitioning Policy No
Cloud Computing Environment Policy No
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Counting Processors for Oracle Licensing
• Count all physical cores where Oracle is “installed and/or running”
• Apply Core Factor
• No Contractual Ability to License by vCPUHYPERVISOR
Data Data Data Data
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Extra-Contractual Grant by Oracle to their Customers
• Policy Grants Rights to use VCPU Metric for Licensing
• Oracle Can (and Does) Change the Policy
“This policy applies to cloud computing environments from the following vendors: Amazon Web Services –Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) and Microsoft Azure Platform (collectively, the ‘Authorized Cloud Environments’).”
The “Oracle Cloud Policy”
www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/cloud-licensing-070579.pdf
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• AWS Provides Oracle License
• On-Demand Billing Model
• Standard Edition 2 Only
• AWS Provides Oracle License
• On-Demand Billing Model
• Standard Edition 2 Only
Amazon RDS License-Included
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Licensing by vCPU for Oracle Software
• Count vCPUs, not Physical Cores
• No Core Factor
• Certain Products are Omitted
• With AWS Hyper-Threading
• 2 vCPU = 1 Processor License
• With NO AWS Hyper-Threading
• 1 vCPU = 1 Processor License
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Oracle Contract Artifacts
AWS deployment option SE license includedOracle cloud
policyCore-based
licenseUnlimited license
agreement
Amazon RDS ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
Amazon EC2 compute ✖ ✔ ✖ ✔
VMware Cloud on AWS ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔
Dedicated hosts on Amazon EC2
✖ ✔ ✔ ✔
Amazon EC2 bare metal instances
✖ ✔ ✔ ✔
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Avoiding the Traps
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“Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for Oracle has several limitations: it supports only SE1 and SE2 Oracle Database licenses, and does not support Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Oracle Data Guard, and many other Oracle Database features.”
Separate Fact From Fiction
www.oracle.com/cloud/oci-vs-aws/
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• Oracle Licensing is Tightly Tied to CPUs –Database Performance Is Not
• Relational Database Performance Driven by IO and RAM
• Database Licensing Makes No Differentiation Between Fast and Slow CPUs
• Optimum Architecture for Oracle Workloads Couples Maximum RAM and IO With Minimal CPU Allocations
Architect for Oracle Licensing Efficiency
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Make Extensive Use of AWS Optimize CPU Feature
• Reduce vCPUs Allocated to Instances at Creation
• Works on RDS/EC2
• The Majority of On-Premises Databases are Over-Allocated on CPU!
Pick Instances Based on RAM/IO Characteristics
• r5b Instances are Fantastic for Relational Databases
• c5/z1d Instances Also Useful
• Pay Attention to EBS Bandwidth
Architecture Tactics
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Right Sizing Reduces Oracle License Usage Dramatically
• Do Not Do Naïve Like-For-Like Sizing
• Embrace AWS Elasticity – Size for Right Now
• Use Hard Numbers for Sizing – AWR and SPECInt Rate
• Use Optimize CPU
Right Sizing in EC2 or RDS
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• vCPU Based Licensing NOTRequired When Server Processors are Known
• Dedicated/Bare-Metal EC2 Hosts
• VMWare Cloud on AWS
• Not Applicable to RDS
• Effective at Scale
Leverage Traditional Processor Licensing
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• RDS Oracle SE2 – License Included
• Great for Dev/Test
• Very Tempting for Production Workloads
• Not Usable for SaaS Workloads
“You may not:
…
use the Oracle Software for rental, timesharing, subscription services, hosting, or outsourcing;
…
make the Oracle Software available in any manner to any third party for use in the third party’s business operations;”
Utilize RDS Standard Edition License Included
www.amazon.com/service-terms/
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• Establish Record Keeping• CloudTrail
• AWS Config
• Change Management Records
• Consider AWS License Manager
• Be Prepared to Seek Expert Help
Be Prepared For Oracle License Audit
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In Closing
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• Study Options and Plan Ahead
• Validate Readiness Prior to Cloud Migration
• Consider Third Party Assistance to Validate Defensible Oracle Deployments in AWS
Summary
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FAQ: Oracle on AWS
BLOG: Understanding Options For Oracle on AWS
WHITE PAPER: Avoiding Oracle Traps with AWS Solutions
Resources
www.houseofbrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2020-05_AWS_FAQs.pdf
www.amazon.com/blogs/apn/understanding-your-options-for-
deploying-and-licensing-oracle-on-aws/
www.houseofbrick.com/avoiding-oracle-traps-in-aws-whitepaper
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