Oracle Licensing Update & Intel Conformance

Oracle Processor Licensing Change: Intel 5500 Series

In other blog postings (this, that), "Oracle Processor Core Factor Table" topped out on the 5400 series for the processor factor licensing discount of "0.5" with "All other multi-core chips" being tagged with a full price charge factor of "1.0".

With the release of the Intel 5500 series processors, the licensing had this new CPU family (with aggressively increased CPU throughput per core) had the factor falling under 1 processor charge per 1 core.

This had recently, and unceremoniously, changed. Oracle had provided this new quad-core 5500 series processors with the same "0.5" discount as the older multi-chip modules that Intel had been selling, for Oracle Enterprise Licensing.

See the bold-faced update below to the "Oracle Processor Core Factor Table"

Factor Vendor/Processor
0.50 Intel Xeon Series 74XX, Series 55XX or earlier Multicore chips

This is good news to the businesses which use Oracle Enterprise licenses, especially those businesses which hold a lot of data in databases, like Network Management businesses, where new data is acquired on 5, 10, 15, and 20 minute intervals on thousands of devices and stores for months.

Some Things Remain The Same: Intel Gets With The Program

This is the first real quad-core processor that Intel has produced, not using a multi-chip module - catching up to other vendors who have been in this space for years like Sun and more recently AMD.

While this does not sound like a significant change, in terms of existing Oracle licensing...

When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One or Standard Edition in the product name, a processor is counted equivalent to a socket; however, in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket.

If applications in your Network Management Center are using Oracle Standard Edition licensing - this means businesses can upgrade hardware from older style Intel Multi-Chip Modules to the newer Single-Chip processors and get a significant increase in CPU capacity at the same license terms.

For example, comparing the licensing requirements in Oracle Standard Licensing for the newer single-chip Intel 5500 series against the multi-chip Intel 7400 series:

Series Cores Chips
7400 2 1
7400 4 2
7400 6 3
5500 4 1

In short, a (relatively new) single socket hex-core socket Intel 7400 platform (with 6 slow cores, being equivalent to an Oracle Standard Licensing 3 socket) can be replaced with a (brand new) quad-socket quad-core Intel 5500 platform (with 16 fast cores, being equivalent to an Oracle Standard Licensing 4 sockets.)

This may be a lot to absorb, but if you are using Oracle Standard Licensing on Intel, stay away from the old processors except in the smallest of configurations.

SUN and Oracle Synergies

SUN and Oracle Synergies

SUN has been producing computing systems for over 2 decades - and they have merged with a large software business.

A SUN Perspective

Sun made an announcement on April 20, 2009

Sun and Oracle today announced a definitive agreement for Oracle to acquire Sun for $9.50 per share in cash. The Sun Board of Directors has unanimously approved the transaction. It is anticipated to close this summer.

An Oracle Perspective

Oracle made an announcement on April 20, 2009

“The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”

An Outside Perspective

What does all this mean to Oracle and SUN Customers?

In some ways, things will not change much.

• More Oracle databases are deployed under Solaris than any other single operating system, according to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. It seems like Solaris is here to stay.
• The largest number of Oracle databases are deployed under SPARC Solaris, it seems like SPARC is there to stay.
• Oracle has embedded Java Runtime into the Oracle Database, so it seems Java is there to stay.
• Oracle has acquired other databases in the past and continues to develop them, so it seems MySQL is there to stay.
• Oracle is very dependent upon external storage vendors for their database, so it seems Open Storage is here to stay.
• Oracle is very dependent upon tape backup for data retention, so it seems StorageTek is here to stay.
• Oracle was heavily driving the thin-client idea with SUN for years, so it seems SunRay is here to stay.

In other ways, one would hope for some things to change

• Oracle has been over-pricing Oracle RDBMS pricing on SUN hardware, depressing SUN hardware sales, and giving business to IBM, who wants to migrate those customers to POWER & DB2.
  

This seems like a match made in heaven - things can only get better!

ZFS: Managing Storage for Network Management

Abstract

Network management systems normally require significant attention to detail regarding availability of data. The disk subsystem chosen for data storage can significantly enhance availability. OpenSolaris ZFS infrastructure provides one of the more robust file systems for secure and available data.

Introduction to ZFS

ZFS is a comprehensive system for managing data. It combines many of the features normally compartmentalized and commoditized by storage and system vendors into a single component. With ZFS comes the ability to provide:

• pooling of resources into volumes
• snapshots of volumes, for backup and restoral purposes
• serialization of volumes for backup and restoral purposes
• cloning of volumes for system or application duplication
• promotion of clones for new system or application installations
• compression of data for increased disk throughput and capacity
• single or double parity to compensate for 1 or 2 failed devices in a volume
• silent error correction for data corruption due to hardware errors
• sharing of data across clustered systems based in zones on the same platform
• sharing of data across to other operating systems via nfs or cifs
  
• sharing of data across to other hardware platforms via iSCSI

This article discusses a very simple implementation leveraging ZFS.

Preparing Disk Devices

Disks can be added to your system, and in this case, I will add a variety of small external SCSI disks to a controller 1. After adding the disks, the following commands are used to find those disks in the operating system and slice them for usage. Normally, I will partition disks so they are all the exact same size, the size of the smallest disk, so they are easy to find replacements for in case of failure.

Ultra2/root $ disks

Ultra2/root $ ls -al /dev/rdsk/c1*0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 55 2009-04-08 13:18 /dev/rdsk/c1t2d0s0 -> ../../devices/sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@1,8800000/sd@2,0:a,raw
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 55 2009-04-08 13:18 /dev/rdsk/c1t3d0s0 -> ../../devices/sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@1,8800000/sd@3,0:a,raw
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 55 2009-04-08 15:20 /dev/rdsk/c1t4d0s0 -> ../../devices/sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@1,8800000/sd@4,0:a,raw

Ultra2/root $ format
Searching for disks...done

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
...
2. c1t2d0
/sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@1,8800000/sd@2,0
3. c1t3d0
/sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@1,8800000/sd@3,0
4. c1t4d0
/sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@1,8800000/sd@4,0

Specify disk (enter its number): 2
selecting c1t2d0
[disk formatted]

FORMAT MENU:
format> partition

PARTITION MENU:
partition> print
Current partition table (unnamed):
Total disk cylinders available: 3984 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
0 root wm 0 - 3980 2.00GB (3981/0/0) 4191993
1 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
2 backup wu 0 - 3983 2.00GB (3984/0/0) 4195152
3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
5 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
6 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
7 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0


partition> quit

FORMAT MENU:
...
format> disk

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
...
Specify disk (enter its number)[2]: 3
selecting c1t3d0
[disk formatted]
format> partition

PARTITION MENU:
...
partition> print
Current partition table (unnamed):
Total disk cylinders available: 3981 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
0 root wm 0 - 3980 2.00GB (3981/0/0) 4191993
1 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
2 backup wu 0 - 3980 2.00GB (3981/0/0) 4191993
3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
5 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
6 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
7 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
partition> quit

FORMAT MENU:
...
format> disk

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
...
Specify disk (enter its number)[3]: 4
selecting c1t4d0
[disk formatted]

format> partition

PARTITION MENU:
...
partition> print
Current partition table (unnamed):
Total disk cylinders available: 3981 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
0 root wm 0 - 3980 2.00GB (3981/0/0) 4191993
1 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
2 backup wu 0 - 3980 2.00GB (3981/0/0) 4191993
3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
5 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
6 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
7 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0

partition> quit

FORMAT MENU:
format> quit

Creating a ZFS Pool

ZFS has the ability to leverage resources stored in: disks, slices, or files. These resources must be included into a pool, in order for ZFS to gain access to them. The pool can be straight striped disks, mirrored, RAID, or raid with parity and silent error correction. This is done through the "zpool" command.

To create a pool "u000" of storage from whole disks using "raidz" (with parity and silent error correction), the following command can be executed.

Ultra2/root $ zpool status
no pools available

Ultra2/root $ zpool create u000 raidz c1t2d0s0 c1t3d0s0 c1t4d0s0

Ultra2/root $ zpool status
pool: u000
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
u000 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0
c1t2d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c1t3d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c1t4d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

Ultra2/root $ df -h | egrep '(u000|File)'
Filesystem size used avail capacity Mounted on
u000 3.9G 24K 3.9G 1% /u000

Ultra2/root $ zfs list
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
u000 122K 3.91G 24.0K /u000

Adding Features to a ZFS Pool

ZFS offers a variety of features, including compression, to make the most of the capacity and throughput of a disk subsystem. Often, after parity is added to a RAID system, compression is desired, in order to redeem the space that was lost in the process of adding the parity.

Ultra2/root $ zfs set compression=on u000

Determining Failure in a ZFS Pool

If a disk in a ZFS pool fails and you are using some kind of redundancy (i.e. raidz) - then the status will indicate you have a failed device. In the following example, target drive 2 had failed in a 3 disk zpool.

Ultra2/root $ zpool status
pool: u000
state: DEGRADED
status: One or moredevices are faulted in response to persistent errors.
Sufficient replicas exist for the pool to continue functioning in a
degraded state.
action: Replace the faulted device, or use 'zpool clear' to mark the device
repaired.
scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Sun April 12 00:30:43 2009
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
u000 DEGRADED 0 0 0
raidz1 DEGRADED 0 0 0
c1t2d0s0 FAULTED 0 0 0
c1t3d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c1t4d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

Manually Replacing a Failed Drive in a ZFS Pool

To replace a failed drive in a zpool, the hardware must be replaced with a drive of equal or greater size. After the replacement is done, a clear command must be issued against the pool and device.

Ultra2/root $ zpool replace u000 c1t2d0s0

Ultra2/root $ zpool status
pool: u000
state: DEGRADED
scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Sun Apr 12 04:07:47 2009
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
u000 DEGRADED 0 0 0
raidz1 DEGRADED 0 0 0
replacing DEGRADED 0 0 0
c1t2d0s0/old FAULTED 0 0 0 corrupted data
c1t2d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c1t3d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c1t4d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

Ultra2/root $ zpool status
pool: u000
state: ONLINE
scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Sun Apr 12 04:07:47 2009
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
u000 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0
c1t2d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c1t3d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c1t4d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

Automatically Recovering a Failed Drive in a ZFS Pool

It is possible to set a property feature on a ZFS Pool so when a failed drive is replaced, the zfs pool will automatically recover. This is very nice for simplifying system administration - all that is required is to insert a new drive (of similar or higher capacity) inserted into the same position as the old drive and the system will automatically recover the pool.

Ultra2/root $ zfs set autoreplace=on u000

Cost Control: Oracle Database Licensing

Cost Control: Oracle Database Licensing

Oracle has a very interesting suite of software, which has traditionally been available across many platforms, and supported by a majority of enterprise software applications. The "Oracle Standard" license agreements offer significant cost savings for Oracle licensing costs, but there are significant restrictions that must be adhered to.

License Agreement Changes: March 16, 2009

The database license terms have changed end of Q1 2009 regarding POWER and non-listed multi-core CPU's, where core is considered a socket. Extracted below are the Intel x64, POWER, and SPARC processors on the Oracle Core Processor Table pdf...

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
0.75 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
1.00 IBM SystemZ
1.00 All Single Core Chips
1.00 All other Multi-Core Chips

When we read the March 16, 2009 database licensing pdf…

Database Metrics
The Oracle Standard Edition One, Standard Edition and Enterprise Editions of the database can be licensed using the Named User Plus metric or the Processor metric...

Named User Plus:
Standard Edition... The Real Applications Clusters option is not included with any Standard Edition versions prior to 10g. Customers who participate in Oracle's Update Subscription Service for the Standard Edition Database can upgrade to the 10g version of the product for the supported licenses. Also, Customers must use Oracle Cluster Ready Services as the clusterware; third party clusterware is not supported, AND Customers must use Oracle Automatic Storage Management to manage all data.

Processor: When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One or Standard Edition in the product name, a processor is counted equivalent to a socket; however, in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket.

Cost Savings Opportunities

Perhaps the best opportunity to restrain costs is to leverage the "Standard Edition" licenses with the Processor metrics, rather than the "Enterprise Edition" licenses. The "Standard Edition" licenses can be used to leverage 2 and 4 socket platforms. If more capacity is needed, additional "Standard Edition" licenses can be leveraged with 10g, using clustering (keep in mind, a linear performance increase is not to be anticipated, with the additional overhead of SGA cache sync'ing over a slow inter-node interconnect.)

Cost Savings Caveats

While this seems like an excellent opportunity for cost savings and platform consolidation, this may not necessarily be the case, depending on the CPU architecture that was chosen. Note the clause on the Database Licensing pdf...

in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket

What is the implication to this?

The majority of multi-core CPU's on the market are all Multi-Chip Modules!

If you are running a POWER or Intel x64 multi-core processor, most of these chips would mean that the core must be counted as a socket.

Examples of Multi-Chip Modules (this is not exhautive) includes:

• Early Intel Dual-Core Pentium-D (where Intel glued 2 single core chips onto the same package)

• Early Intel Quad-Core MCM (where Intel glued 2 dual-core chips onto the same package)
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_2_Quad
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon#3200-series_.22Kentsfield.22
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon#3300-series_.22Yorkfield.22
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon#5300-series_.22Clovertown.22
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon#7300-series_.22Tigerton.22
  

• IBM POWER4 MCM (where IBM glued 4 POWER CPU's onto the same pacakge)

• IBM POWER5 MCM with four processors and four 36 MB external L3 cache dies on a ceramic multi-chip module

In effect, single socket quad core multi-chip modules would count as 4 socket machines in Oracle licensing terms.

If the business is trying to save money implementing Linux on Quad-Core processors, it it important to understand whether they are Multi-Chip Modules or not. If this is the case, then the business may need to resort to single socket systems, tied together in a grid, or choose a different CPU architecture that does not require Multi-Chip Modules like some modern SPARC processors.

Oracle is always the best place to go, in order to clarify some of these odd license stipulations.

Oracle Database Licensing: Cuts Own Throat

Oracle Database Licensing: Cuts Own throat

The Register in the UK posted an odd article concerning the licensing change to Oracle

Oracle raises software prices on IBM's Power6 iron

Odd statement regarding IBM POWER6

The Oracle price hike on Power6 chips seems unfair given that the quad-core Sparc64 VII processors used in Sun and Fujitsu machines have the same 0.75 scaling factor

The Power6 processor gains most of it's horsepower from an increase in clock rate (POWER6: 2.2GHz to 5.0Ghz, while SPARC64 processors gain their throughput through an increase in number of cores (SPARC64: 2 to 4 cores), while the CoolThreads SPARC T processor gain their throughput through a massive increase in threads per core (T: 32 threads to 64 threads.)

Multiple SPARC cores for Oracle has been a FREE LUNCH at the expense of SPARC customers.

Odd statement regarding Fujitsu SPARC64

It will be interesting to see what Oracle does when Sun and Fujitsu roll out the Sparc64 VII+ quad-core chips, which they are expected to do soon

I don't know why it would prove interesting. It is not like the clock speed will double, as POWER5 to POWER6. Right now, the core multiplier is completely out-of-whack for the SPARC64 chips, just completely.

Odd statement regarding Intel Itanium

Intel gets its quad-core "Tukwila" Itaniums out the door in June or July. The Tukwila chips should certainly get their scaling factor removed, but given that HP and Intel do not have a database software business, I would venture that Tukwilas might sneak by with a 0.75 scaling factor.

There is a popular & competitive Microsoft SQL Server on those platforms. The scaling factor may remain, to just be competitive with Microsoft SQL Server. If the clock rate doubles, removing the scaling factor removal may be a reasonable thing, but I doubt the clock rate would double.

Odd statement regarding SUN SPARC ROCK

various other Sparc, and other chips have a 100 VUP rating. ...it is hard to imagine a 16-core "Rock" UltraSparc-RK chip not being in the same range when it comes out sometime in the fall.

I highly doubt a 16 core RK chip will be 16x faster than a SPARC64 V, VI, or VII core. This being the case, IBM cranking up the VUP rating would be completely "off the chain". I think this analyst clearly has mistaken expectations from either SUN or IBM.

Reasonable statement regarding Oracle

To be fair, Oracle should run a database benchmark test on each processor and come up with a literal scaling factor based on possible clock speeds of all processors and make the scale all relative to the performance of one machine that it picks as the gold standard.

I agree with this sentiment. Just comparing POWER and the SPARC processors... In the words of President Obama, "to be FAIR":

scaling factor for POWER6 should be 1.50 instead of 0.75
scaling factor for SPARC64 should be 0.50 instead of 0.75
scaling factor for SPARC-T should be 0.50 instead of 0.75

Even with the chart above, POWER would still have an advantage of scaling factor of 0.50 per core over SPARC64 due to IBM's incredibly high clock rate!!!

This clearly demonstrates how far out-of-whack the pricing is for Oracle Databases on systems today.

Oracle cuts their own throat

Former substantial cross-platform vendors like Informix and Sybase are not the large players, like they used to be, resulting in databases being closely aligned to Hardware or OS vendors. Most applications that require a third-party database will use a major commercial vendor, like: Oracle Database, IBM DB2, or Microsoft SQL.

Oracle's continuing punishment of SUN and "giving the farm" away to IBM has always seemed odd, considering that IBM is a direct commercial competitor, while SUN's MySql is not a direct commercial competitor. The migration of Oracle RDBMS to IBM DB2 is something that IBM's professional services is something that they would LOVE to do, while there is no equivalent professional services group in SUN to move Oracle RDBMS to MySQL.

It is just a matter of time before Oracle continues to modify their processor core scaling factors, since they are cutting their own throats by advocating platforms who have extremely strong competing databases... but perhaps that is why Oracle has been able to charge a premium for SPARC - because there was no serious database competition.

By Oracle abusing their near-monopolistic licensing policies on SUN, because Oracle could, Oracle is being forced to compete against other databases on their home turf, instead of on the turf which Oracle could have an advantage (SUN SPARC Solaris has no real commercial competing database vs IBM's DB2 on IBM hardware vs Microsoft SQL on Intel Itanium or Intel x64.)

Oracle Database License Change: IBM Punished

State of the Oracle Database Union

The Oracle Database Licensing has CHANGED, Effective Date: March 16, 2009!

The "Oracle Standard Edition One" and "Standard Edition" systems are charged on a "Per User Plus" basis, whichever is greater, on 2 sockets and 4 sockets respectively (the processor/cores option is not used) while the "Enterprise Edition" uses Named Users
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/databaselicensing.pdf

Named User Plus: This metric can be used in all environments. Different minimums apply depending on the Database edition:

• Standard Edition One requires a minimum of 5 Named User Plus licenses or the total number of actual users, whichever is greater. Oracle Standard Edition One may only be licensed on servers that have a maximum capacity of 2 sockets...

• Standard Edition requires a minimum of 5 Named User Plus licenses or the total number of actual users, whichever is greater. Oracle Database Standard Edition can only be licensed on servers that have a maximum capacity of 4 sockets… Effective with the release of 10g, the Oracle Database Standard Edition product includes the Real Applications Clusters database option…

• The Enterprise Edition requires a minimum of 25 Named User Plus per Processor licenses or the total number of actual users, whichever is greater.

Processor: This metric is used in environments where users cannot be identified and counted. The Internet is a typical environment where it is often difficult to count users. This metric can also be used when the Named User Plus population is very high and it is more cost effective for the customer to license the Database using the Processor metric. The Processor metric is not offered for Personal Edition. 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

Licensing a multiplexing environment: If Oracle software is part of an environment in which multiplexing hardware or software, such as a TP monitor or a web server product, is used, then all users must be licensed at the multiplexing front end. Alternatively, the server on which the Oracle programs are installed and/or running may be licensed on a per Processor basis

In short, if you are licensing Oracle on one or a cluster of IBM systems running on (POWER5 or) POWER6 on platforms between 1-4 sockets AND you are paying for every user of the system (i.e. every help desk agent), then you are OK.

Is Your Business Exposed?

If you are licensing Oracle on one or a cluster of IBM systems running POWER6 (or IBM System Z mainframes) and not paying on a per-user basis (regardless of the number of sockets per server)… and paying licensing on a Processor basis (with a core multiplier factor), then the licensing factor change will impact you.

The following table holds the per-core or per-processor factor (extracted relevant CPU architectures for SUN & IBM.) The items in italics indicate a license change.
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/contracts/library/processor-core-factor-table.pdf

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
0.75 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

Partitioning can help mitigate the cost factors in the licenses. Higher end Solaris platforms use SUN Dynamic Reconfiuration while lower end platforms can use SUN Solaris 10 Containers (capped) to help license mitigation. (i.e. if it is thought that you may be out of compliance on an internal SUN based system, you could move the Oracle Database into a Capped Solaris 10 Containier on the same platform) which has fewer processors available, while the rest of the processors could be available for the other application processes in another container.
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/partitioning.pdf

Hard partitioning
Hard partitioning physically segments a server, by taking a single large server and separating it into distinct smaller systems. Each separated system acts as a physically independent, self-contained server, typically with its own CPUs, operating system, separate boot area, memory, input/output subsystem and network resources.
Examples of such partitioning type include: Dynamic System Domains (DSD) -- enabled by Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR), Solaris 10 Containers (capped Containers only), LPAR (adds DLPAR with AIX 5.2), Micro-Partitions (capped partitions only), vPar, nPar...

You would need to determine if you are using the POWER6 of a SystemZ processor, to understand exposure. Because the multiplier has increased, hard partitioning (LPAR, DLPAR, vPar, nPar) will not be able to directly limit your exposure - unless you implement fewer cores, to reduce your total number of cores, since each core will cost you more. The loss of a core, to bring your budget in-line, will result in a serious loss in CPU power (due to the high thread speed for the core) for a measly 0.25 multiplier increase in cost. Implementing partitioning under AIX may cost you more in IBM license fees, as well as orphaning a core or two, which may not be able to be realistically recovered in another application.

Clear as mud, right?

SUN, Solaris, Linux, and Growth

The Past 10 Years for SUN

SUN's investment into Linux, historically, to blunt Microsoft, has cut it's own throat since 2000. Without SUN's investment into Linux, UNIX like environments could have become irrelevant, however, with Microsoft's NT operating system release and IIS - so I think no matter what SUN did, it was a lose-lose situation... but SUN's backing of x86 Linux was a more strategic move than just ceding the position to Microsoft & x86, giving them a better position to compete later.

Linux and The Future

SUN's more recent targeted investment into Debian Linux to endorse Ubuntu and now adopt a variant of Debian packaging, may be an attempt to stop the bleeding of Solaris into RedHat and create more "choice" - which helps keep Solaris relevant under x64.

I think the adoption of Debian Linux packaging was a mistake by SUN, I believe they could have adopted new standards using a limited SVR4 format to achieve the same goals and back-port the new standard packaging to Linux for all of their OpenSource products (i.e. OpenOffice, NFS, ZFS, MySQL, GlassFish, Java, etc.)

Competition with Linux & Solaris under x64 and T Processors

Is Linux needed needed on the T processors to compete with x64?

Considering that SUN's hardware T market running Solaris has double the volume of the x64 market running combined Linux, Solaris, and Windows, Linux does not seem that important, to drive SUN sales (more on this later, with a quarterly report graph.)

Since the same software is available under Linux as it is under Solaris, perhaps not. I think the competition between the T and x64 processors is a more significant issue, with Linux impact. A single Solaris socket T processor no longer outruns Linux quad socket x64 processors on web serving workloads.

If Web Serving is the typical Linux workload, then the SPECWeb indicates that the T processors have been outperforming x64 for years on a price/performance ratio, until benchmarks published just a few months ago (with a single socket T2 outrunning quad sockets x64... but now quad socket hex core Intel chips are pushing 25% higher performance over a single socket T2) making x64 Linux price competitive with Solaris & SPARC T.
http://spec.org/cgi-bin/osgresults?conf=web2005&op=fetch&proj-COMPANY=256&proj-SYSTEM=256&proj-PEAK=256&proj-HTTPSW=256&proj-CORES=256&proj-CHIPS=256&proj-CORESCHP=256&proj-CPU=0&proj-CACHE1=0&proj-CACHE2=0&proj-CACHE3=0&proj-MEMORY=0&proj-NETNCTRL=0&proj-NETCTRL=0&proj-NNETS=0&proj-NETTYPE=0&proj-NETSPEED=0&proj-TIMEWAIT=0&proj-DSKCTRL=0&proj-DISK=0&proj-SCRIPTS=0&proj-WEBCACHE=0&proj-OS=0&proj-HWAVAIL=0&crit2-HWAVAIL=Jan&proj-OSAVAIL=0&crit2-OSAVAIL=Jan&proj-SWAVAIL=0&crit2-SWAVAIL=Jan&proj-LICENSE=0&proj-TESTER=0&proj-TESTDAT=0&crit2-TESTDAT=Jan&proj-PUBLISH=256&crit2-PUBLISH=Jan&proj-UPDATE=0&crit2-UPDATE=Jan&dups=0&duplist=COMPANY&duplist=SYSTEM&duplist=CORES&duplist=CHIPS&duplist=CORESCHP&duplist=CPU&duplist=CACHE1&duplist=CACHE2&duplist=CACHE3&duplist=NETTYPE&dupkey=PUBLISH&latest=Dec-9999&sort1=PEAK&sdir1=-1&sort2=SYSTEM&sdir2=1&sort3=CORESCHP&sdir3=-1&format=tab

This being said, in the carrier markets, with the 1U high dual T2+ platforms, there are no 8 socket 1U high hex-core Intel platforms to compete with it. Also, a 4U high quad socket T platform from sun scaling up to the equivalent of 4 T sockets, three quad socket X64 units would be required to compete (with dozens of NIC cards.) The modern x64 competition is starting to press the 1 & 2 year old T chips now. SUN really needs a T refresh (T3 should get them to be about 2-3x as fast as the T2 per-socket an restore the performance lead to 1x T socket being faster than 4x x64 sockets, to compete in this workload arena effectively.)

If SUN can release a T processor for embedded consumer or network devices, I think Linux may be a requirement, or a significantly slimmed down Solaris, in order to compete. I think that SUN avoiding this space has been disastrous decision, seeing the Apple had become largely relevant again, through this angle.

Profitability of the SUN SPARC T Processors

Some believe it is a "wild guess" to suppose the T family is profitable, but I think we can analyze the quarterly results to come up with a conclusion based closer to reality. SUN's product gross margins seem to float between 35% and 50%.
http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/investor/images/earnings_slides/img10_lg.jpg


It seems the T processors make up about 375 Million (in Q2-2009) vs non-T SPARC at about 700 Million.
http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/investor/images/earnings_slides/img07_lg.jpg


Everything else looks about equal. Take these two product sets (T SPARC, non-T SPARC), with increasing revenue on T and decreasing revenue on non-T, plot both against the Products gross margin... it looks like the T processors are not as profitable as the Non-T processors, but still reasonable. Clearly, SUN needs a refresh in the non-T processors (SPARC64 VII+ or RocK), to stabilize the downward trend, since this is the lion-share of the product revenue.

The "Other Systems" trend, seems to be inversely proportional to the T SPARC revenues... this bothers me historically, since any growth in the T SPARC seems to be getting canceled out by this other legacy category over the past 2 years, but this legacy category does not really exist any longer, as a proportion of significant revenue, so I don't believe it is worth tracking, moving forward.

If the T revenue can become in-parity with the non-T sales or supercede the non-T sales, then the unpredictability of SUN's quarterly profits & losses will be suppressed, improving the suitability for longer term investors.