IBM Power Systems Technical University

Athens, Greece
November 2013

Oracle on Power –
Power advantages and license
optimization

November 2013

Alexander Hartmann <alexander.hartmann@de.ibm.com> © 2013 IBM Corporation

1
Agenda

Advantages of Power Systems

Virtualization on Power Systems
Description of Power processor terms
Oracle Editions
Standard Edition
RAC
Sub-capacity pricing
Licensing examples
Summary of Power Advantages

2
Advantages of Power Systems

Availability Security

Scalability

Virtualization

Efficency

IBM

GreenIT

3
Virtualization on Power Systems
CPU Virtualization: Dedicated, Donating, Shared
– Multiple Processor Pools
• Group by ISV, environment, department, agency, desired functionality
(licenses), etc

Memory Virtualization: Dedicated or shared

– Active Memory Expansion
– Active Memory Sharing
– Memory Deduplication
Network/SAN/Int. Disks: Dedicated or shared (using Virtual I/O – Servers)

Virtualization of processor cores and consolidation of workload

is the basic concept for saving license costs

6
6 Audi Oracle RAC Infrastruktur | M.Springer, A.Hartmann | 29.09.2011
Virtualization on Power Systems – Power advantages
Virtualization is build into the system, “Hardware based virtualization”
Therefore there is no overhead when you consolidate several systems
onto one Power server
Competitors only have software based virtualization which suffer from
partially extreme overhead depending on system size and load
VMWare, Xen, Oracle VM (based on Xen) are software based
Only Oracle VM for SPARC also offers firmware-based hypervisor, but that
one does not support sharing of CPU / memory / adapter resources or
dynamic reallocation no efficient consolidation possible

7
7Source: A Comparison of PowerVM
Audi and VMware
Oracle RACvSphere 4.1 update
Infrastruktur 1 Virtualization
| M.Springer, Performance,
A.Hartmann Edison Group, September 2011.
| 29.09.2011
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/pol03090usen/POL03090USEN.PDF
Workload Consolidation
Consolidation allows you to size your system for the average usage plus
overhead for peaks of some LPARs (but not all as long as peaks do not
happen at the same time)
Sharing CPU ressources lowers the number of required licenses

8
8 Audi Oracle RAC Infrastruktur | M.Springer, A.Hartmann | 29.09.2011
Workload Consolidation
Consolidation allows you to save:
– Licenses (share CPU ressources)
– Memory (Compression, Sharing), Physical Adapters (Sharing)
• Followup-Costs (How expensive is one managed LAN/SAN port?)
– Rack / Floor Space
– Power / Cooling

Enhancement of server utilization

from 17% to 60% at a consolidation
from 64 dedicated servers with 256
cores on one server with 72 cores

High-performance Power7
server enable a very efficent
server environment

9
9 Audi Oracle RAC Infrastruktur | M.Springer, A.Hartmann | 29.09.2011
Power advantages – High availability

AIX offers the highest availability and RAS features on the UNIX market
No need to invest in Oracle – RAC to have a high availability, PowerHA might be
enough

Downtime minutes per year of server operating systems

180
180

160

150
140

125
120
min/year

100

80

60

40
54
38
35
15

20

0
AIX on Power Solaris on HP-UX SuSE Linux RHEL Windows Windows
SPARC Server 2008 Server 2003
Plattform

* compare ITIC study, “ITIC 2009 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey”, July 2009
10
10 Audi Oracle RAC Infrastruktur | M.Springer, A.Hartmann | 29.09.2011
Power advantages – High per-core performance

High single thread performance

– Up to 4,42 GHz
– 80 MB L3-Cache
– Up to 4 threads per core (SMT-4)
Power 8 will provide
– Up to 12 cores / socket
– 96 MB L3-Cache
– Up to 128MB L4-Cache (off-chip)
– Up to 8 threads per core (SMT-8)

High single thread performance will speed up applications / tasks that cannot be
parallelized

11
11
 Description of Power processor terms
• Physical:“Real physical cores”
• Active
• CoD (can be activated on an daily
basis or permanently with license
keys)
• deconfigured (broken)
• Dedicated: Used exclusively for a single
LPAR
• Shared: Pool of physical processors for
several LPARs (multiple pools can be
configured)
• Entitled Capacity (EC): Number of physical cores
• Virtual: “Virtual cores” which look like guaranteed for an LPAR. This guarantee cannot be
real cores for an LPAR, this is where overcommitted. However if one LPAR does not need its
guaranteed resources they are automatically redistributed to
overcommitment takes place
LPARs which need more power (up to the number of virtual
• Logical: Each virtual processor can run
processors) each 10 milliseconds
1, 2 or 4 threads (SMT), similar to
• Capped/Uncapped: Controls whether an LPAR is allowed to
HyperThreading on x86. The amount
use more than their EC or not
(1,2 or 4) can be configured
independently for each LPAR
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12 Audi Oracle RAC Infrastruktur | M.Springer, A.Hartmann | 29.09.2011
Oracle Editions
Enterprise Edition
– Flagship Oracle database
– Many options (with cost) available (RAC, Partitioning, Advanced
Compression, OLAP, etc)
– Licensed by core or “named user”
Standard Edition
– Four- socket version, including full clustering support (RAC support)
– Licensed by socket or “named user”
Standard Edition One
– Two-socket version of Standard Edition (w/o RAC support)
– Licensed by socket or “named user”
Personal Edition
– Full-featured (except RAC) version for a single user
Express Edition
– Free of charge, limited (1 Core, 4GB of data), online forum support
Oracle Database Mobile Server (formerly: Oracle Database Lite)
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– Complete database software for the mobile database applications
Oracle Editions - List Prices [ October 2013 ]
Enterprise Edition
– 47.500$/core + 10.450$/core/year maintenance
– RAC: 23.000$/core + 5.060$/core/year maintenance
– Partitioning: 11.500$/core + 2.530$/core/year maintenance
Standard Edition
– 17.500$/socket + 3.850$/socket/year maintenance
– RAC included (Limit: total of 4 sockets in entire RAC)
Standard Edition One
– 5.800$/socket + 1.276$/socket/year maintenance
Oracle Processor Core Factor Table:
– Multiplier for core count depending on processor model/type
P780/795 Turbo Core does not limit number of cores to license (you still
have to license 8 cores, not just 4)
– That’s the official statement from Oracle … discuss this topic with them,
some customers report that Oracle aggeed to only charge 4 cores
Unlimited License Agreement available, SAP licensing schema available
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Use cases for Standard Edition on Power Systems
If Standard Edition offers all features that you need you can save a
significant amount of license cost
Use case 1 : 2 node RAC
– 2 x p730/p740 with 2 sockets / 16 cores each
– Total of 32 cores, 128 logical CPU
– License cost (SE, 3 years): 4x17.500$ + 3x 4x 3.850$ = 116.200$
– License cost (EE, 3 years): 32x47.500$ + 3x32x10.450$ +
(RAC option): 32x23.000$ + 3x32x 5.060$ = 3.744.960$

Use case 2 : 1 node database, 4 Sockets

– 1 x p750 with 4 sockets / 32 cores / 128 logical CPU
– License cost (SE, 3 years): 4x17.500$ + 3x 4x 3.850$ = 116.200$
– License cost (EE, 3 years): 32x47.500$ + 3x32x10.450$ = 2.523.200$

Use case 3 : 1 node database, 2 Sockets

– 1 x p730/740 with 2 sockets / 16 cores / 64 logical CPU
– License cost (SE One, 3 years): 2x 5.800$ + 3x 2x 1.276$ = 19.256$
15
– License cost (EE, 3 years): 16x47.500$ + 3x16x10.450$ = 1.261.600$
Most Important Features missing in Standard Edition

No Compression, Encryption, Partitioning

No Online index rebuild, online table redefinition, most Flashback features
missing
No Parallel Query, DML, Statistics Gathering, Index Builds, Datapump
No DataGuard, but
– If DG is used for having a “30 minutes behind production” – database
(to recover from logical data errors) a “Manual Standby Database” can
be used, this requires just a few SQL and Unix scripts, see e.g.
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/oracle/article.ph
p/3682421/Manual-Standby-Database-under-Oracle-Standard-
Edition.htm
– If DG is used as a disaster recovery system to mirror data to a remote
data centre a design alternative could be to replicate the data to remote
data centre on SAN level. If the primary site fails the LUNs can be made
visible on the backup nodes, after startup of Oracle a crash recovery will
be done, after that the database is available again.

16
RAC – Really needed if running on Power Systems?

Costs 50% On Top of Enterprise Edition

Really needed for all (consolidated) instances? By building more than one
Shared Processor Pool you will need to buy RAC licenses only for a part of
the system while still being able to consolidate
Adds additional complexity / dangers of (operating/software) errors
Use Cases for RAC:

– Higher overall performance

Power Systems provides single machines which can handle “your
workload”
In addition RAC introduces scalability problems which might cause
you to rewrite / modify your application and/or schema (Sequences,
Indexes on ascending / date columns)

– Higher availability
Power Systems have the highest availability and RAS features on the
UNIX market
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RAC – Really needed if running on Power Systems?

Use Cases for RAC (cont.):

– Availability during planned machine downtimes

Move your LPAR to a different machine using Live Partition Mobility
with no downtime (* Might also be “expensive”, see later *)

– Availability during planned OS updates

Move your database to another LPAR using DataGuard or PowerHA

– Availability during planned database updates

Oracle supports “Rolling Updates” in a RAC environment for “some”
patches
However, does it always work?
Is this really an option for your mission-critical system?
You will probably need a planned downtime anyway

– Recommendation: No need to use RAC

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Oracle editions – Licensing availability on Power Systems
Oracle Database Edition
Power Systems Product Description
Core Pricing Socket Pricing

Oracle Oracle
Power Systems Maximum Maximum Oracle Socket Oracle Enterprise
Standard Standard
Model Cores Count Edition
Edition Edition One

Power 710 (+) 8 (8) 1 (1) Yes Yes Yes

Power 720 (+) 8 (8) 1 (1) Yes Yes Yes

Power 730 (+) 16 (16) 2 (2) Yes Yes Yes

Power 740 (+) 16 (16) 2 (2) Yes Yes Yes

Power 750 (+) 32 (32) 4 (8 due to DCM) Yes Yes/No No

Power 760+ 48 8 due to DCM Yes No No

Power 770 (+) 64 (64) 16 Yes No No

Power 780 (+) 128 (128) 16 Yes No No

Power 795 256 32 Yes No No

For Standard Edition licensing eligibility with RAC the total number of sockets in the
cluster is considered, not just the number of sockets in an individual system.
Some Power7+ are Dual Chip Modules (DCM, 2 chips on each socket). Oracle counts those
as 2 sockets each.
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Oracle editions – Licensing availability on Power Systems

Oracle Database Edition

Power Systems Product Description
Core Pricing Socket Pricing

Oracle Oracle
Power Systems Maximum Oracle Oracle Enterprise
Maximum Cores Standard Standard
Model Socket Count Edition
Edition Edition One

PS 700 4 1 Yes Yes Yes

PS 701 8 1 Yes Yes Yes
PS 702 16 2 Yes Yes Yes
PS 703 16 2 Yes Yes Yes
PS 704 32 4 Yes Yes No
p260 16 2 Yes Yes Yes
p270 24 4 due to DCM Yes Yes No
p460 32 4 Yes Yes No
p24L (*) 16 2 Yes Yes Yes
7R1 (*) 8 1 Yes Yes Yes
7R2 (*) 16 2 Yes Yes Yes
7R4 (*) 32 4 Yes Yes No

For Standard Edition licensing eligibility with RAC the total number of sockets in the
cluster is considered, not just the number of sockets in an individual system.
(*) Running PowerLinux, only Oracle 10g available
20
Oracle recognizes IBM PowerVM for sub-capacity pricing

• Hard partitioning means that only the part of the server that is used for Oracle
workload has to be licensed.
• This is referred to as “sub-capacity” pricing
• LPARs (DLPARs) on Power are accepted ways to do Hard partitioning .

• Soft partitioning is the standard for most other virtualization techniques, e.g.
VMWare, XEN, KVM, Oracle VM (depending on configuration) or IBM WPARs.
• Soft partitioning it is not eligible for Oracle partitioning "sub-capacity" pricing

• Oracle VM (based on Xen) can be configured in a way that it is eligible for hard
partitioning, but then the number of assigned cores has to be hard-coded and
cannot be changed without restarting the partition (in contrast to Dynamic LPAR –
options with PowerVM)

21
Oracle and Live Partition Mobility

• Live Partition Mobility enables you to move your running LPAR from one physical
host to another without interuption of service. This could be used for e.g.
maintenance or for load balancing features.

• End of August Oracle updated their “Partitioning Policy” document:

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/partitioning-070609.pdf

• It now contains the following paragraph:

IBM Power VM Live Partition Mobility is not an approved hard partitioning technology. All
cores on both the source and destination servers in an environment using IBM Power VM
Live Partition Mobility must be licensed.

• This means that even if you have only a single LPAR which is configured with 4 cores
(resulting in 4 licenses) you would have to license your entire source and target server
(imagine a pair of p770 with 64 cores each)

• Please complain at your local Oracle representative to further be allowed to use this
really benificial feature without having to pay exorbitant license costs which technically make
no sense (you are never using more than those 4 cores for your workload)
22
Oracle recognizes IBM PowerVM for sub-capacity pricing

• Shared Processor Pools:

If several LPARs running
Oracle software use a
Shared Processor Pool
only the number of cores
in that pool have to be
licensed

Note:
No official “external”
document exists, but
Oracle LMS handles it
that way. You can ask
Oracle for a free
Advisory Service to
approve your setup

23
 The Processor Core Factor
For all “core based” – licenses a core factor for each processor type is defined
Examples
– UltraSparc T1 < 1.4GHz, T3 0.25

– UltraSparc T1 1.4GHz, T2+, T4, T5, SPARC64 VII+, 0.5

M5, M6, Opteron, Xeon, Itanium before Dec. 2010 0.5

– SPARC64 VI, VII, UltraSparc IV, IV+, T2, 0.75

Power5+ (or earlier) 0.75

– Power6/7/7+, System z 1.0

Itanium after Dec. 2010 1.0

Even though Oracle charges more for Power Systems you can still save
license costs on Power as you can better consolidate your instances due to a
much more efficient virtualization compared to e.g. VMWare
Always check the official list on the Oracle website as it is regularly updated.

24
 Capacity on Demand

Oracle charges for the maximum number of processors the product can
run on at a specific time.
The customer need not license the CoD (Capacity on Demand) until it is
turned on, and then only if the capacity is available to Oracle

– If the intent of turning on the CoD is not for Oracle database usage,
there are many ways to limit the active Oracle partition(s) so they can't
use the capacity.

– When CoD is on, and depending on the mix of partitions, customer can
also set the processor values to be consistent with the Oracle licensed
values.

– When CoD is on, for an Oracle LPAR, the customer may have to
purchase additional Oracle licenses if they don’t currently own enough
to cover the additional cores.

25
 Licensing examples - Disclaimer

The following slides show a few examples how you could design your
system and what impact that would have on the number of licenses that
you have to buy.
The information is based on Oracle’s Global Licensing website
( http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/index.html ). That website
must be consulted for any formal and official clarification on Oracle’s
Licensing.
Those examples should be used to get an idea which setups are possible
and make good use of sub-capacity licensing.
Therefore you should use those examples as a guideline to design
your system and ask Oracle to accept your configuration.

26 <<This document is not officially approved by Oracle - IBM is not liable for incorrect or incomplete information.>>
 Detailed licensing rules – visual examples will follow

c
ni
Pa
’t
on
D
27 <<This document is not officially approved by Oracle - IBM is not liable for incorrect or incomplete information.>>
Core Licensing : Dedicated LPARs

Number of cores to license: 6

28 <<This document is not officially approved by Oracle - IBM is not liable for incorrect or incomplete information.>>
Core Licensing : Shared processor pool

LPAR1: EC=1 + capped : 1 core

LPAR2: VP=6 + uncapped: 6 cores
Number of cores to license: 6 (number of CPUs in pool)

29 <<This document is not officially approved by Oracle - IBM is not liable for incorrect or incomplete information.>>
Core Licensing : Shared processor pool

LPAR1: EC=2 + capped : 2 cores

LPAR2: VP=3 + uncapped: 3 cores
Number of cores to license: 5 (EC=2 in LPAR3 does not count)

30 <<This document is not officially approved by Oracle - IBM is not liable for incorrect or incomplete information.>>
Core Licensing : Shared processor pool

LPAR1: EC=1.6 + capped : 1.6 cores

LPAR2: VP=2 + uncapped: 2 cores
Number of cores to license: 4 (3.6 rounded up)

31 <<This document is not officially approved by Oracle - IBM is not liable for incorrect or incomplete information.>>
Core Licensing : Multiple shared processor pool

LPAR1: EC=1.6 + capped : 1.6 cores

LPAR2: VP=5 + uncapped: 5 cores
LPAR1+2: 5 cores max
LPAR4: VP=2 + uncapped: 2 cores
Number of cores to license: 7

32 <<This document is not officially approved by Oracle - IBM is not liable for incorrect or incomplete information.>>
PowerVM offers optimized use of Oracle-licensed CPUs
- Oracle only has to be licensed for cores used by Oracle-LPARs, not the entire server
- Multiple pools (e.g. Standalone, RAC, etc) within a single POWER7 - server possible
- Within the Shared Pools „regular“ micro-partitioning
- Unique feature of IBM PowerVM
Dynamically Resizable
21Cores 3 3 3
15 Cores 2 1Cores
6 Cores 7 Cores
Cores
Virtual I/O Shared Processor Shared ProcessorCores Cores Cores Cores
Virtual I/O
Server Pool 1 Pool 2 Server
Shared Processor Pool 3
Partition Partition
Oracle Part.ing
Oracle Part.ing

Oracle Part.ing
Int Virt AIX Int Virt
Linux
Linux Linux Linux
Manager Manager
WebSphere
WebSphere
WebSphere
WebSphere
WebSphere

V5.3

Oracle 10g

Oracle 10g

Oracle 11g
Oracle10g

Oracle11g
Storage Storage

Oracle 9i
Sharing Sharing
Ethernet Ethernet
Sharing Sharing
Virtual LAN
Virtual I/O paths

POWER Hypervisor
Processors in the Virtual I/O Servers which handle SAN
SAN
all the I/O do not have to be licensed!
LAN LAN
33 LAN<<This document is not officially approved by Oracle - IBM is not liable for incorrect or incomplete information.>>LAN
Power Advantages for Oracle databases

High performance / core

Highest availability in the UNIX market
Perfect platform for consolidation of instances / virtualization of resources
while having a strong separation of environments like using separate
hardware
You only have to license exactly what you need
Virtualization without overhead due to firmware implementation
Active Memory Expansion supported with Oracle 11gR2
Live Partition Mobility supported with Oracle 10gR2, 11gR1 and 11gR2
(single instance) and 11gR2 (RAC) – But as of now you have to license your
entire servers
Sell your surplus licenses !!!
(European Court of Justice decision in July 2012 – Oracle vs. UsedSoft )

35
Thank you

Alexander Hartmann
Senior IT Specialist
Migration Factory
Lab Services System p

te
Alexander.Hartmann@de.ibm.com

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