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Consider Oracle Standard Edition to Reduce Database Management System Costs Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00174599, Donald Feinberg, Jane B. Disbrow, 3 March 2010, R3392 12032010

Organizations wanting to reduce their database costs should consider Oracle Standard Edition (SE) and Oracle Standard Edition One (SE1) for some requirements. With substantial cost savings possible using SE and SE1, we discuss the features available for SE and SE1 compared to the full Enterprise Edition (EE) database, including the licensing and contract implications. Key Findings • Oracle Database SE and SE1 have a much lower price point and can be used, where functionality limitations are not an issue, as an alternative to EE, especially for test and development environments. • With the advancements in computer chip technology (for example multi-core, faster speeds and larger memory), the restrictions of two sockets (SE1) and four sockets (SE) are less of an issue. • There are limitations in functionality and available options with SE1 and SE making them unsuitable for some enterprise-class deployments, such as data warehousing, missioncritical systems requiring high availability and/or disaster recovery and high-security requirements. • Organizations using mixed licensing (EE, SE, SE1 processor licenses and/or Named User Plus [NUP] for each version) will need to put extra efforts into asset management to stay compliant.

Recommendations • Organizations who traditionally have only purchased Oracle Database EE licenses should consider SE1 or SE where it meets their requirements. • Organizations using or wanting Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) should consider Oracle Database SE as an alternative on smaller servers, especially in a test and development environment, as Oracle RAC is included with SE. • Organizations must understand the licensing and contract terms with respect to Oracle Database SE1 and SE.

2 WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Today’s servers have become more powerful with faster processors, multi-core technology and can access more memory. Organizations that can make use of Oracle SE1 and SE, with restrictions on the number of sockets deployed, can benefit from significant savings in licensing and maintenance costs. In addition, since SE includes Oracle RAC, organizations can create a clustered server environment to support both multiple applications and a high availability environment. Due to limitations in functionality and available options with SE and SE1, they may not meet requirements when needing other functionality. The lower cost of Oracle SE and SE1, especially on modern, higher-power servers, should be of interest not only to the CIO, CTO and database administrators (DBAs), but also to IT purchasing personnel interested in cost optimization.

During the past 12 to 18 months, there has been a sharp increase in the number of Gartner clients inquiring about the use of SE as opposed to EE. We believe this is being driven by the economic environment as organizations look for ways to reduce costs and also by the increases in speed and performance of processors. This research addresses the usefulness of SE1 and SE, their limitations and the pricing and contract considerations associated with both.

Standard Edition and Standard Edition One Pricing The primary reason for the interest in SE and SE1 as Oracle platforms is the price. First, Oracle licenses are priced by processor, where a processor is defined as a core for EE but as a socket for SE and SE1 (regardless of the number of cores in the processor). So, to determine the number of EE licenses required, the number of cores is multiplied by a core factor.

ANALYSIS Oracle currently has five versions of its database management system (DBMS), Oracle Database 11g Release 2: • Enterprise Edition (EE). • Standard Edition (SE). • Standard Edition One (SE1). • Express Edition (XE). • Personal Edition (PE). Although they all have the same basic functionally in the DBMS as Oracle EE, the other four have licensing restrictions based on hardware configurations, operating systems and number of users. We limit our discussion to SE1 and SE, as XE and PE are special editions with greater restrictions and more limited usefulness for production environments. Standard Edition One licenses are restricted to a single server with one or two sockets and SE can be licensed on servers with up to four sockets – with no restrictions on the number of cores per socket in either case (SE1 or SE). With the power of today’s processors, a four socket server is capable of supporting some high-volume applications. What makes SE more interesting is it also has Oracle RAC included in the price. Therefore, Oracle SE can be used on two servers, each with two sockets running as a cluster with Oracle RAC.

In the x86 example (see Table 1), EE is $47,500 multiplied by a core factor of 0.5, where SE is $17,500 per socket and SE1 is $5,800 per socket. Also, as SE includes RAC, the cost of EE with RAC is $70,500 ($47,500 for the EE database and $23,000 for RAC) multiplied by the core factor of 0.5 per processor, while SE remains at $17,500 per socket. In a full SE deployment of four quad-core processors, SE would cost $70,000 (four times $17,500) and EE with RAC in the same deployment would require eight licenses (16 cores times the core factor of 0.5) for a total of $564,000 (($47,500 + $23,000)*16*0.5). This is a list price saving of $494,000, hence the interest in SE and a need to understand the restrictions and limitations of SE as compared to EE. So, while Oracle does discount EE, the savings made by using SE or SE1 are significant.

Limitations of Standard Edition and Standard Edition One Except for the difference in the number of sockets (two for SE1 and four for SE) and the addition of RAC with SE, both SE and SE1 products have the same functionality and restrictions. Both SE and SE1 are meant to be upward compatible to Oracle EE and are, therefore, fully functional Oracle DBMSs. If any of the limitations found in the SE products are necessary for a specific application in your enterprise, then Oracle EE must be used. In Note 1, we highlight some features included in SE and SE1 that have restrictions. In Note 2, we highlight some features that are not included, as well as the some of the extra cost options of EE that are not available with SE or SE1. These are the specific functionality and options that continue to raise questions in inquiries with Gartner clients.

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3 Table 1. Example of Oracle List Prices for Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition and Standard Edition One Using x86 Quad-Core Processors (0.5 Core Factor for EE)

Oracle pricing

EE

EE with RAC

SE

SE with RAC

SE1

Processor defined as

Core

Core

Socket

Socket

Socket

Maximum number of processors

N/A

N/A

4

4

2

List price per processor

$47,500

$70,500

$17,500

$17,500

$5,800

Oracle licenses required: dual-/quadcore server

4

4

2

2

2

List price per dual-/quad-core server

$190,000

$282,000

$35,000

$35,000

$11,600

Oracle licenses required: two dual-/ quad-core servers

8

4

Oracle RAC with two dual-/quad-core servers

$564,000

$70,000

EE = Enterprise Edition, SE = Standard Edition, RAC = Real Application Clusters, N/A = not available Source Gartner (March 2010) The Oracle Management Packs are not available with SE and SE1, implying that database management will be more manually and DBA intensive. Automation tools such as ADDM are included in the Tuning Pack and, therefore, are not available. Some of the functionality included with the management packs can be acquired from third-party software vendors such as CA, Embarcadero Software and Quest Software. However, we always recommend careful examination of licensing exceptions when using these thirdparty products to assure compliance with Oracle licensing. Many features that would be necessary for data warehousing and larger database sizes are not available, such as the Oracle Partitioning Option, basic compression features and the Oracle Advanced Compression Option. Also, Oracle online analytical processing (OLAP), Oracle Data Mining and any parallel query functionality is not available. The lack of these features would make data warehousing difficult using SE or SE1. Other options not available and mentioned during inquiries are: 1. Oracle Advanced Security option – of interest as it contains encryption. 2. Oracle Spatial, required by many applications for locationspecific data. 3. Oracle Data Guard – used for making a copy of the database for high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR). An additional restriction of SE and SE1 is that no Oracle-maintained copy of the database can exist in another location (see Note 3). We believe this implies that an SE or SE1 implementation should not be used with applications requiring a DR site. For HA, a duplicate can

be made, in the same location, for redundancy but would require the use of a third-party product such as Quest SharePlex for Oracle or the use of the storage vendor’s tools for such a copy. Another feature that is not available in SE and SE1 is the Oracle Flashback technology. Many Oracle customers use this (available since Oracle Database 9i) for both recovery of human errors affecting the database, in test environments for repairing programming errors and for audit type queries. Despite the above mentioned functionality limitations in SE1 and SE, our inquiries with Gartner clients on the use of SE1 and SE have shown a sharp increase over the past 12 months. Not only do we get more questions about the use of SE1 and SE, but also we have spoken to many clients with successful implementations of both. Although most have used SE1 and SE for new applications, some have actually replaced EE with SE and utilized the EE licenses for other applications requiring EE’s greater functionality. Any application requiring the functionality or options that are not available with SE and SE1, must use Oracle Database EE. This includes mission-critical applications requiring high availability or high security. It also includes applications requiring a disaster recovery environment, most data warehousing applications requiring partitioning or complex optimization structures (such as OLAP), applications requiring the manipulation of spatial data and any application with a workload requiring a total of more the maximum processors licensable in SE. Finally, applications requiring advanced security features (such as transparent data encryption, backup encryption, network encryption and label security) would require the use of EE. We recommend that when considering Oracle SE or SE1 for use, consult the Oracle document titled “Oracle Database 11g Editions”

4 for a comparison table of options and functionality in EE, SE and SE1. Also, Oracle allows a 30-day free trial period with software, so if there is any doubt about functionality, we suggest installing SE or SE1 and proving the necessary functionality in your environment.

Oracle Standard Edition and Real Application Clusters Oracle RAC has matured over the past few years. Many Gartner clients are interested in using Oracle SE in a RAC environment. As stated above, RAC is included with SE and the only restriction is the server cluster may not contain more than four sockets. The implication is the configuration is limited to two servers of two sockets or four servers of one socket. However, as chips are available today with four and six cores (and soon with eight cores), this can yield very powerful Oracle RAC configurations. The primary downside to using SE for RAC is the restriction that the Oracle management packs (such as Diagnostic and Tuning Pack) cannot be licensed and used to assist in the management and maintenance of the RAC cluster. This will increase the complexity of managing the cluster, placing more responsibility on the administrator to manually manage the cluster. Also, while RAC can normally be installed with third-party software to manage the cluster (such as Veritas), with SE the only option is Oracle Clusterware. Further Oracle RAC can be used with third-party file systems. However, with SE the only option is Oracle Automatic Storage Manager (ASM). Since Oracle began offering RAC with SE (Oracle Database 10g Release 1), we believe there were few customers using RAC in this environment. Over the past few years, as processor power has increased, coupled with RAC becoming more mature, our inquiries show a greater number of Oracle customers adopting SE with RAC. As long as the functionality limitations are not an issue, we believe that SE can be used to create smaller Oracle RAC systems as an application platform at a greatly reduced cost.

Pricing and Contract Considerations As mentioned above, organizations considering SE and SE1 must ensure that Oracle licensing restrictions are being honored. For example, if a server is purchased with eight possible sockets but only four sockets are actually being utilized, Oracle will not allow SE to be used because the server can hold more than four sockets. The same is true for SE1 – if the server has more than two sockets, SE1 may not be used even if only two sockets are populated. For example, Gartner has not seen Oracle agree to any concessions on this maximum number of sockets on a server for customers wanting to use SE for four sockets on a server that has more than four sockets.

For organizations that have EE licenses but may want to “tradein” some of these EE licenses for SE or SE1 licenses; they will find that this is against Oracle’s policy. Generally, Oracle will allow customers to “trade up” (for example, to trade in SE for EE); however, Oracle will generally not allow organizations to “trade down.” As an alternative, organizations may find that current EE licenses can be moved to the larger servers, allowing new SE1 or SE licenses to be used with some current or new smaller severs. Organizations that utilize a mixed-license environment will generally find that licensing costs will be reduced over purchasing EE processor licenses for every requirement, but it will take additional asset management to ensure that the organization remains in compliance with Oracle licensing rules. Generally, we recommend that the organization looks at its current environment to determine where SE can be used, rather than opt for EE and then move it to any new systems that require it. If the organization is not going through any new growth in Oracle licenses, then cancelling support for some EE may be possible but it is subject to Oracle’s re-pricing policy. Oracle also has Named User Plus (NUP) licensing available for SE and SE1, which may be a less expensive alternative for those that have a limited number of users for the system. For example, the list price for NUP licenses for SE is $350 per NUP and for SE1, the cost is $180 per NUP. Oracle requires a minimum of five NUP licenses per customer, but this only a minimum – if the total number of users exceeds five, then the actual number of NUP licenses must be purchased. Because Oracle only requires the minimum of five licenses per customer, NUP licenses will often be less expensive for SE systems that have few users. For example, for a four-socket server, it would take 200 NUP licenses to equal the cost of four SE licenses ((17,500*4=$70,000)/$350=200). Because Oracle only requires a minimum of five licenses per customer, multiple SE servers can be run as long as the actual number of users are licensed.

5 Note 1 Oracle Features Included With Oracle Standard Edition 11g Release 2

Note 2 Oracle Standard Edition 11g Release 2 Feature and Option Restrictions

Useful feature information from “Oracle Database 11g Editions” .

For a complete list of features see: “Oracle Database 11g Editions” .

High Availability

Partial list of Oracle Database EE Features that are not available in SE/SE1:

• Oracle Fail Safe – Windows only • Oracle Data Guard • Incremental backup and recovery – no optimized incremental backup

• Flashback (Table, Database and Transaction Query – Flashback Query is available)

Scalability • SQL Plan Management • Oracle Real Application Clusters – included with SE only (not with SE1)

• Basic Table Compression

• Automatic Workload Management – requires Oracle Real Application Clusters (not available with SE1)

• Database Resource Manager

Development Platform

• Virtual Private Database

• SQLJ – requires Oracle Programmer

• Summary Management – Materialized View Query Rewrite

• Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET – Windows only

• Fine-Grained Auditing

• Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator support – Windows only • Active Directory integration – Windows only • Native .NET Data Provider—ODP.NET – Windows only • .NET Stored Procedures – Windows only

Partial list of Oracle Database EE Options that are not available in SE/SE1: • Oracle RAC (available only with SE) • Oracle RAC One Node • Oracle Management Packs (all)

Integration

• Oracle Spatial

• Basic Replication – read-only, updateable materialized view

• Oracle Advanced Security (includes encryption) • Oracle Label Security

• Oracle Streams – no capture from redo • Oracle Database Vault • Database Gateways – separate product • Oracle Partitioning • Oracle Advanced Compression • Oracle OLAP

6 Note 3 Oracle Standard Edition 11g Release 2 – Special Licensing Restrictions for Oracle Real Application Clusters Source: Oracle Database Licensing Information 11g Release 2 (11.2) When used with Oracle Real Application Clusters in a clustered server environment, Oracle Database Standard Edition requires the use of Oracle Clusterware. Third-party clusterware management solutions are not supported. The license restrictions for Standard Edition must be adhered to. The maximum number of CPUs defined is for the entire cluster; it is not a per node maximum. Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) must be used to manage all database-related files. Third-party volume managers and file systems are not supported for this purpose. Oracle ASM is required for the storage of: • Database data files • Online logs • Archive logs • Control files • Server parameter files (spfiles) • Fast Recovery Area • Voting disk • Oracle Cluster Registry • Local storage must be used for: • Oracle Home • Trace files • Dump files No Oracle-maintained copies of any of the above files can exist in any other locations, with the following exception: Customers who want to manually script maintenance of a standby database can create a second copy of their archive logs outside of Oracle ASM on a local file system only, designated by the LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n parameter. RMAN backups of files can reside on either a local or network mounted file system. No other cluster software can be installed on the system, including, OCFS, OCFS2, third-party clusterware, third-party cluster volume managers, and thirdparty cluster file systems.