Oracle on Power Advantages

2013 IBM Corporation1

Alexander Hartmann

Oracle on Power Power advantages and license optimization

November 2013

IBM Power Systems Technical University

Athens, GreeceNovember 2013

2Agenda

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

3Advantages of Power Systems

AvailabilityAvailability

IBM

ScalabilityScalability

VirtualizationVirtualization

EfficencyEfficency

SecuritySecurity

GreenITGreenIT

6 Audi Oracle RAC Infrastruktur | M.Springer, A.Hartmann | 29.09.20116

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


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

Source: A Comparison of PowerVM and VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 Virtualization Performance, Edison Group, September 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


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


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

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HP-UX SuSE Linux RHEL WindowsServer 2008

WindowsServer 2003

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Downtime minutes per year of server operating systems

* compare ITIC study, ITIC 2009 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey, July 2009

11 11

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


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)

Virtual: Virtual cores which look like

real cores for an LPAR, this is where

overcommitment takes place Logical: Each virtual processor can run

1, 2 or 4 threads (SMT), similar to HyperThreading on x86. The amount (1,2 or 4) can be configured independently for each LPAR

Entitled Capacity (EC): Number of physical cores guaranteed for an LPAR. This guarantee cannot be overcommitted. However if one LPAR does not need its guaranteed resources they are automatically redistributed to LPARs which need more power (up to the number of virtual processors) each 10 milliseconds

Capped/Uncapped: Controls whether an LPAR is allowed to use more than their EC or not

Description of Power processor terms

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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) Complete database software for the mobile database applications

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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)

Thats 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$ License cost (EE, 3 years): 16x47.500$ + 3x16x10.450$ = 1.261.600$

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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.php/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.

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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 somepatches 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

For Standard Edition licensing eligibility with RAC the total number of sockets in thecluster 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.

NoNoYes32256Power 795

NoNoYes16128 (128)Power 780 (+)NoNoYes1664 (64)Power 770 (+)NoNoYes8 due to DCM48Power 760+

NoYes/NoYes4 (8 due to DCM)32 (32)Power 750 (+)YesYesYes2 (2)16 (16)Power 740 (+)YesYesYes2 (2)16 (16)Power 730 (+)YesYesYes1 (1)8 (8)Power 720 (+)YesYesYes1 (1)8 (8)Power 710 (+)

Oracle Standard

Edition One

Oracle Standard Edition

Oracle Enterprise Edition

Maximum Oracle Socket Count

Maximum Cores

Power Systems Model

Socket PricingCore Pricing

Oracle Database EditionPower Systems Product Description

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Oracle editions Licensing availability on Power Systems

For Standard Edition licensing eligibility with RAC the total number of sockets in thecluster is considered, not just the number of sockets in an individual system.(*) Running PowerLinux, only Oracle 10g available

NoYesYes4327R4 (*)YesYesYes2167R2 (*)YesYesYes187R1 (*)YesYesYes216p24L (*)NoYesYes432p460

NoYesYes4 due to DCM24p270

YesYesYes216p260

NoYesYes432PS 704

YesYesYes216PS 703

YesYesYes216PS 702

YesYesYes18PS 701

YesYesYes14PS 700

Oracle Standard

Edition One

Oracle Standard Edition

Oracle Enterprise Edition

Maximum Oracle Socket CountMaximum Cores

Power Systems Model

Socket PricingCore Pricing

Oracle Database EditionPower Systems Product Description

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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)

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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)

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Oracle recognizes IBM PowerVM for sub-capacity pricing

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

Note:No official externaldocument exists, butOracle LMS handles itthat way. You can askOracle for a free Advisory Service toapprove your setup

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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+, 0.5M5, 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 1.0Itanium 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.

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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 dont currently own enough to cover the additional cores.

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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 Oracles Global Licensing website ( http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/index.html ). That website must be consulted for any formal and official clarification on Oracles 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 designyour system and ask Oracle to accept your configuration.

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Detailed licensing rules visual examples will follow

Don

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Core Licensing : Dedicated LPARs

Number of cores to license: 6

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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)

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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)

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LPAR1: EC=1.6 + capped : 1.6 cores LPAR2: VP=2 + uncapped: 2 cores Number of cores to license: 4 (3.6 rounded up)

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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

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PowerVM offers optimized use of Oracle-licensed CPUs

Processors in the Virtual I/O Servers which handle all the I/O do not have to be licensed!

- 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

Linux

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15 Cores1Cores

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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 )

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Thank you

Alexander HartmannSenior IT SpecialistMigration FactoryLab Services System [email protected]

Pleas

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Oracle on Power Advantages

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