Sun / Oracle License Change - T2+ Discount!

Sun / Oracle License Change - T2+ Discount!

Abstract

Oracle licenses it's database by several factors, typically the Standard License (by socket) and an Enterprise License (by core scaling factor.) Occasionally, Oracle will change the core scaling factor, resulting in discounting or liability for the consumer.

The Platform

The OpenSPARC platform is an open sourced SPARC implementation where the specification is also open. There have been several series of chips based upon this implementation: T1, T2, and T2+. The T1 & T2 are both single socket implementations, while the T2+ is a multi-socket implementation.

The Discount

While reviewing the Oracle licensing PDF, the following information has come to light concerning the OpenSPARC processor line, in particular the Sun UltraSPARC T2+ processor.

Factor Vendor/Processor
0.25 SUN T1 1.0GHz and 1.2GHz (T1000, T2000)
0.50 SUN T1 1.4GHz (T2000)
0.50 Intel Xeon 74xx or 54xx multi-core series (or earlier); Intel Laptop
0.50 SUN UltraSPARC T2+ Multicore
0.75 SUN UltraSPARC T2 Multicore
0.75 SUN UltraSPARC IV, IV+, or earlier
0.75 SUN SPARC64 VI, VII
0.75 SUN UltraSPARC T2, T2+ Multicore
0.75 IBM POWER5
1.00 IBM POWER6, SystemZ
1.00 All Single Core Chips

Note, Red is old, Green is new. Oracle has broken out the T2+ processor to a core factor of 0.50 instead of 0.75.

To see a copy of some of the old license factors, please refer to my old blog on the Oracle IBM license change entry.

Impacts to Network Management infrastructure

To calculate your discount, see the table below. It is basically 33% for the Enterprise version of Oracle under the T2+ processor.

Chips Cores Old New
01 08 06 04
02 16 12 08
03 24 18 12
04 32 24 16

If you have been waiting for a good platform to move your polling intensive workloads to, this may be the right time, since the T2+ has had it's licensing liability reduced.