Avoiding Oracle Cost Traps When Migrating to AWS

Nick Walter Principal Architect & Cloud Practice Lead House of Brick Technologies House of Brick

House of Brick Technologies, an OpsCompass company, helps customers with challenges deploying databases on- or off- premise, whether on bare metal hardware, virtualized infrastructure or cloud-based models:

Compliance & Compliance & Architecture & Database Modernization Governance Governance Migration • Database virt & cloud • Database • Database • Database plan & • Database replatforming licensing licensing design (Postgres/MySQL) • Audit prep & • Audit prep & • DB POCs & • Database DevOps defense defense migrations • Cloud operation • Cloud operation • Related HA, DR & tools tools BU

Oracle Wants AWS to Seem Scary/Confusing/Expensive • Licensing Cost Claims • License Compliance Claims • Supportability Claims

AWS is a great option for running Oracle workloads – If the Traps are Avoided

House of Brick consultants are not attorneys. Any advice given herein should be validated with appropriate legal representation.

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021 Oracle • Licensing is Contractual Licensing • Oracle Cannot Dictate Terms 101 • Contract is Surprisingly Ambiguous on Certain Areas • Virtualization/Cloud • CPU Disablement • Contract Only Includes Certain Artifacts • Entire Agreement Clause Excludes Everything Else • Oracle Representatives Often Make Incorrect or Misleading Claims

Processor Named User Plus Unlimited License (NUP) Amendment (ULA)

• Tied to Number of • Tied to Number of • Unlimited Use of Hardware Processors in Users AND Hardware Named Products Server Hosting the Processors in Server • Very Expensive Installation Hosting the Installation • Time Limited • Common in Production • Common in Non- • Converts to Processor Environments Production Licenses at End of Term • Most Flexible Environments

Q. License Definitions and Rules

Processor: shall be defined as all processors where the Oracle programs are installed and/or running. Programs licensed on a processor basis may be accessed by your internal users (including agents and contractors) and by your third party users. 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.

Oracle Document Contractual? Technical Support Policies Yes Processor Core Factor Table Yes Ordering Documents Yes Software Investment Guide No Licensing Data Recovery Guide No Technology Hosting No Partitioning Policy No Cloud Computing Environment Policy No

Data Data Data Data • Count all physical cores where Oracle is “installed and/or running” • Apply Core Factor • No Contractual Ability to HYPERVISOR License by vCPU

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021 The “Oracle Extra-Contractual Grant by Oracle to their Customers Cloud Policy” • Policy Grants Rights to use VCPU Metric for Licensing • Oracle Can (and Does) Change the Policy

“This policy applies to cloud computing environments from the following vendors: Amazon Web Services – Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) and Microsoft Azure Platform (collectively, the ‘Authorized Cloud Environments’).”

www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/cloud-licensing-070579.pdf

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021 Amazon RDS • AWS Provides Oracle License License- • On-Demand Billing Model Included • Standard Edition 2 Only • AWS Provides Oracle License • On-Demand Billing Model • Standard Edition 2 Only

• Count vCPUs, not Physical Cores • No Core Factor • Certain Products are Omitted • With AWS Hyper-Threading • 2 vCPU = 1 Processor License • With NO AWS Hyper- Threading • 1 vCPU = 1 Processor License

Oracle cloud Core-based Unlimited license AWS deployment option SE license included policy license agreement Amazon RDS ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔

Amazon EC2 compute ✖ ✔ ✖ ✔

VMware Cloud on AWS ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔

Dedicated hosts on ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 bare metal ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ instances

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021 Separate Fact “Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for Oracle has several limitations: it supports only SE1 From Fiction and SE2 Oracle Database licenses, and does not support Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Oracle Data Guard, and many other Oracle Database features.”

www.oracle.com/cloud/oci-vs-aws/

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021 Architect for • Oracle Licensing is Tightly Tied to CPUs – Oracle Database Performance Is Not Licensing • Relational Database Performance Driven by IO and RAM Efficiency • Database Licensing Makes No Differentiation Between Fast and Slow CPUs

• Optimum Architecture for Oracle Workloads Couples Maximum RAM and IO With Minimal CPU Allocations

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021 Architecture Make Extensive Use of AWS Optimize CPU Tactics Feature • Reduce vCPUs Allocated to Instances at Creation • Works on RDS/EC2 • The Majority of On-Premises Databases are Over- Allocated on CPU!

Pick Instances Based on RAM/IO Characteristics • r5b Instances are Fantastic for Relational Databases • c5/z1d Instances Also Useful • Pay Attention to EBS Bandwidth

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021 Right Sizing in Right Sizing Reduces Oracle License Usage EC2 or RDS Dramatically • Do Not Do Naïve Like-For-Like Sizing • Embrace AWS Elasticity – Size for Right Now • Use Hard Numbers for Sizing – AWR and SPECInt Rate • Use Optimize CPU

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021 Leverage • vCPU Based Licensing NOT Traditional Required When Server Processors Processor are Known Licensing • Dedicated/Bare-Metal EC2 Hosts • VMWare Cloud on AWS • Not Applicable to RDS • Effective at Scale

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021 Utilize RDS • RDS Oracle SE2 – License Included Standard • Great for Dev/Test Edition • Very Tempting for Production Workloads License • Not Usable for SaaS Workloads Included “You may not: … use the Oracle Software for rental, timesharing, subscription services, hosting, or outsourcing; … make the Oracle Software available in any manner to any third party for use in the third party’s business operations;” www.amazon.com/service-terms/

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021 Be Prepared • Establish Record Keeping For Oracle • CloudTrail License Audit • AWS Config • Change Management Records • Consider AWS License Manager • Be Prepared to Seek Expert Help

CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY ©2021 Summary • Study Options and Plan Ahead • Validate Readiness Prior to Cloud Migration • Consider Third Party Assistance to Validate Defensible Oracle Deployments in AWS

www.houseofbrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2020-05_AWS_FAQs.pdf

BLOG: Understanding Options For Oracle on AWS www.amazon.com/blogs/apn/understanding-your-options-for- deploying-and-licensing-oracle-on-aws/

WHITE PAPER: Avoiding Oracle Traps with AWS Solutions

www.houseofbrick.com/avoiding-oracle-traps-in-aws-whitepaper