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ORACLE DATABASE PROCESSOR BASED LICENSE COST

We must have been involved in only technical activities and issues on Oracle database every day, but most of the DBA’s must have a limited or no knowledge on how Oracle charges customers with their license models. Most of us might know that Oracle database is free for learning, testing and for any non-profit applications or firms. When I have asked few of my colleagues about the commercial license, they just say that Oracle database licensing is based on a number of cores in your processor. Hope you might be one of them too 🙂 .

To the professionals who do not know, there are two models from Oracle in purchasing database licenses for commercial purposes. Let us check the licensing terms and their prices for the most widely used features in database enterprise edition.

These license details are gathered from Oracle as on 21-Jan-2016 and might change any time.

Type of licenses:

Oracle has two types of database licenses and one for software update and meta-link that you can choose from.

1. User based (Named User Plus).

Licensed based on a number of users accessing the database whether programmatically or end user. This sort of licensing is very much suitable for a fixed intranet application where users are fixed and no major scalability. But Oracle sells a minimum of 25 users for Enterprise Edition per CPU.

Cons: Even though your application have only 10 users, you will need to pay for 25.

2. Processor based.

From the name, though we understand it per processor with respect to Oracle this is different to multi-core processors. Today, every server is running on multi-core processors. Oracle calculates the number of processors on the server as “(number of cores) * (multi-core factor)”.

Each make of processor has their respective multi-core factor. Few examples:

• 0.5 for Intel/AMD.
• 0.25 for UltraSPARC.
• 1.00 for IBM Power systems.

Cost for Enterprise edition:

1. For User-based:
Price per user: 950 $
Software update and support price: 209 $
2. For Processor based:
Processor license: 47,500 $
Software update and support price: 10,450 $

It will be interesting to know how much would few of EE options like RAC, Partitioning etc… would cost. Isn’t it? Let us see that.

Option

Per user license

Support license

Processor license

Support license

Diagnostic pack

150 $

33 $

7500 $

1650 $

Tuning pack

100 $

22 $

5000 $

1100 $

12c Multitenancy

350 $

77 $

17500 $

3850 $

Partitioning

230 $

50 $

11500 $

2530 $

Compression

230 $

50 $

11500 $

2530 $

RAC

460 $

101 $

23,000 $

5060 $

Active dataguard

230 $

50 $

11500 $

2530 $

These prices are additional on top of enterprise license that is purchased.

Case study:

Hope the numbers that are projected are scattered to get a clear picture of total costs incurred in the database. Let us take a scenario and calculate the licensing costs.

Requirement – Calculate license for Oracle database EE with Diagnostic pack, Partitioning and tuning pack including support on Intel quad-core processor for unlimited users.

Calculation –

• It falls under processor based licensing as the requirement is for unlimited users.
• Number of processors (P) = (Quad Core)*(multi-core factor) = 4*0.5 = 2.
• EE Oracle database cost (DB) = 47500 $.
• EE options cost (OP) = Diagnostic + Tuning + Partitioning = 7500 $ + 5000 $ + 11500 $ = 24000 $.
• Support license cost (SP) = EE + Diagnostic pack + Tuning + Partitioning = 10450 $ + 1650 $ + 1100 $ + 2530 $ = 15730 $

Total cost is now calculated as = Number of processors*(EE Oracle database cost + EE options cost) + Support license cost = P*(DB+OP) + SP = 2*(47500+24000) $ + 15730 $ = 158730 $

It’s 158730 $, that’s very huge isn’t it?

You must be now thinking what will be the validity of this license 🙂 , right? That’s another tricky one from Oracle, they have licenses without any term validities and also with 5 or 4 or 3 or 2 or 1 years of term validity. It’s only my perception that the total price we calculated in our case study is valid until you seek for termination.

For further details on licensing please refer – http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list-070617.pdf

Bullet-ins:

• Not just production systems, Oracle licenses are applicable to your non-production systems as well.
• Oracle may track your “Named User Plus” licenses based on results from the v$license.
• Oracle may track your “Processor” licenses from any of your AWR reports that you upload to meta-link.

Was this useful? Like it and share it.

Leave your comments!

Feel free to give additional information in the comments, that I can validate and include in blog posts or update this as well.

32 Comment

  1. Navakanth

    I heard that there is a concept of purchasing bulk licenses at discount?

    1. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

      That’s true. Even bulk licenses can include unlimited servers as well. But, I am not aware of what are the clauses and prices for such licenses.

      1. Farooq Khalid

        The unlimited Servers license is called ULA (Unlimited license agreement). If you are running a big environment like ours where we have 100’s of prod databases, this is best thing to go. You pay a fixed price (In Millions $$ of-course) and then you can utilize unlimited licenses.

        1. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

          Thanks “Farooq Khalid”. That makes sense.

  2. Jagadish

    Bulk pricing will always be there for bigger software products.
    Is handled case by case based on the situation and stakeholders involved in the deal. Clauses and Pricing are always kept confidential in best interests of buyer and seller.

    1. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

      Yeah !!! Probably, this will even differ from customer to customer and so there is no fixed rule for it. It goes with a sales deal between Oracle and the customer.

  3. Anonymous

    Nice one Pawan..

    1. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

      Thank you 🙂

  4. Balu

    I have one Question here I am new to this, Oracle licences we need to get once in lifetime for specific version or we need to get yearly basis.

    1. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

      It’s one time payment, until you upgrade your databases to new version. Oracle will definitely let you do this as it releases new oracle database versions and closes support for old ones 🙂

      1. Balu

        Thanks!!!! and one more question!! Oracle is providing only executable files(Oracle Database), is my understanding correct, its our duty to set up hardware configuration supported to the executable.

        1. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

          That’s right…

  5. Разбираемся в запутанной теме лицензирования Oracle в HCI - Virtualization solution with a nuts

  6. Gopal

    It’s very informative. Thank you.

  7. nsshenoy

    Consider i have a web application where i cant predict number of users getting connected. This web application in the backend connected to oracle server. i have one socket and quad core processor in it. How to calculate licencing cost? Am completly new to oracle. Does a bussiness less than 1000 users required oracle EE? Cant i have oracle standard edition? Do i need Diagnostic,Tuning,Partitioning options?

    could you please provide me some point of contact in oracle were i get these pricing details based on diffrent senarios?

    Any ways thanks for your post. very much informative.

    1. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

      Calculating license cost is as shown in the blog. But for small business with less than 1000 users, EE will be very costly. Rather i would recommend SE or any other open source RDBMS databases as well.

      Diagnostic license is again a bit costly affair. Hope for your case it would not make sense to purchase. From oracle i have no contacts or references to help you on purchase licenses.

      1. Fedderico10

        Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as i understand, it doesn’t matter how many users are connected to your website (frontend), the backend uses only one user to connect to the database. So you’d be going for the user-based licence.

        1. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

          User-based license is based on number of user sessions established on the database, might be same user or distinct users. So if you have large number of user connections to the database better not to opt user-based license.

  8. utkarsh

    Hi Pawan,

    There is a requirement to setup new test and live env for OFMW, i.e DB/WEBLOGIC/OSB.
    how to finalize the licenses requirement. Test Machine will be physical how ever production will be on VM.

    1. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

      Oracle licensing costs purely depends on the usage of database server, please check with application on number of user sessions expected and the amount of data transaction expected per user session. Based on which you can plan your infra which will help you draw conclusions on license costs.

  9. Zubear

    Pawan ,I am little bit confused with the number of cores in the server for the database Enterprise Edition License. We have 40 cores on each node with 2 nodes 11g RAC. Do i need to purchase 80 cores Enterprise Edition + 80 cores RAC license ?

  10. DP

    Pawan in the example you calculated the cost at 158730 $. is this the cost for 1 year license or for how may years?

    1. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

      Nice point !!! That’s really something i could not crack. But from sources i knew, it is one time cost until the next major version change. But not 100% sure of it.

      1. DP

        Thanks for a quick reply. Support cost of 15730 $ is paid every year? Is the support cost really independent of number of processors as shown in your calculations? In this case the yearly money Oracle will make after initial sale will be very low. Thanks for this informative article.

        1. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

          Hope thats the business decision. And the reason for having new releases for every 2 years atleast will keep their business running 🙂

          1. DP

            HI Pawan
            I was looking at the support price in the following article
            https://www.pythian.com/blog/are-you-paying-too-much-for-database-support/

            Author calculated annual support price as

            Standard annual fees for maintenance and support = $69,000 (sum of the all options) * 12 (number of cores) * 0.5 (licensing multiplier for x86 CPUs) * 0.22 (22% of list price) = $91,080

            This makes more sense as a reasonable amount of revenues are generated for Oracle for all the development effort they are putting in developing upgrades

            What is your thought. Thanks for quick reply

          2. Pawan Kumar Yaddanapudi

            That really makes sense. Thanks for sharing.
            But having said that, cost calculation is only an estimation but the actual prices and offers vary from client to client based on Oracle sales team.
            So, I could not find any standard algorithm so far even after checking the same with multiple clients. So made it very generic and not specific.

  11. Tej

    I’m looking for license price for Oracle Healthcare Data Model. Can you please help with this regards?

    o License + SW Subscription & Support 12 Months – $$$
    o Annual SW Subscription & Support Renewal – $$$

  12. Chad Lomax

    What about Oracle Autonomous Database 18c? Won’t that be weeding out the Oracle DBAs a little bit since they are automating security and backups?

    1. Chad Lomax

      My apologies. Just found your article on that subject. Thanks!

  13. NITIN GERA

    I believe it should be below formula to find cost of mainteinence and support:
    P*(DB+OP + SP)

    i.e. support license cost should also be multiplied by P (NUMBER OF PROCESSER)

    Pl clarify.

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