Oracle Technology Software Licensing Virtualized Environments

What is Partitioning?

“Partitioning” occurs when the CPUs on a server are separated into individual sections where each section acts as a separate system. Sometimes this is called “segmenting.” There are several hardware and software virtualization technologies available that deliver partitioning capabilities, with varying degree of resource allocation flexibility.

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

Server Partitioning Environments.

Hard Partitioning: Oracle has determined that the following technologies are permitted as a means to limit the number of Oracle Processor licenses required for a given server:

• Hard Partitioning technologies as listed in the Partitioning Document
• Oracle Trusted Partitions for certain Oracle Engineered Systems
• Oracle Linux for KVM, Oracle OVM Server, Oracle Solaris Zones

Soft Partitioning: Segments the operating system using operating system resource managers and is not approved as a means to determine or limit number of Oracle Processor licenses required on a given server or cluster of servers

Capacity on Demand: Oracle recognizes and allows this practice to license only the number of cores activated when a server is shipped

Virtualized Environments are considered a Soft Partitioning technology:

Oracle does not have a separate licensing policy for virtualization deployments of Oracle software for on premise licensing

• Soft Partitioning technologies are not permitted as a means to determine
  or limit the number of software licenses required for any given server or
  cluster or servers
• Virtualized environments are licensed within the parameters of the metricdefinition

For more information, please contact info@akoft.com.