Background
Oracle licensing is often complex, especially when the software is hosted on a virtualized computer. The Processor and Named User Plus license metric both account for the hardware resources where the software is installed. When virtualization is introduced the hardware resources that require licensing becomes gray. When licensing Oracle software by the Processor metric hosted on a VMware virtual machine vMotion (migration) capabilities need to be accounted for. Oracle may require you to license the vSphere cluster that hosts all the ESX servers due to a single virtual machine part of the cluster having Oracle software installed.
Use Case
Our lab has Oracle Database Server Enterprise installed on two VMware virtual machines and one standalone (physical) machine. The Software Entitlement is 50 Processor licenses for Oracle Database Server Enterprise.
Steps
Step 1 - Bring in Discovery Data
Step 1 Details: Discovery data can be brought in from ServiceNow, 3rd party data sources, or manually uploaded. The example here is manually uploaded.
Step 1 Table: cmdb_ci_computer, cmdb_sam_sw_install
Step 1 Screenshot: Lab instance has three software installations of Oracle DB Server Enterprise
Step 2 - Create Relationships
Step 2 Details: Connecting ServiceNow to your vCenter will auto generate the required relationships. We manually created the relationships for this example.
Step 2 Table: cmdb_rel_ci
Step 2 Screenshot: Lab instance has relationships created for virtual machines to ESX hosts and ESX hosts to vSphere cluster. Each ESX host has hardware data populated (CPU name, CPU Count, etc.). Runs on:: Runs relationship with the database instance is only required for Oracle Database extra cost options (Partitioning, RAC, etc.).
Step 3 - Create a Software Model
Step 3 Details: Software Models can be auto created through discovery or by creating a software entitlement. This example goes through manually creating one to ensure we capture the two discovery models (3 total installs).
Step 3 Table: cmdb_software_product_model, cmdb_sam_sw_discovery_model
Step 3 Screenshot: A Software Model is created for Oracle DB Server where the Version condition is "Anything" and the Edition condition is "Enterprise". Our entitlement covers any version of Oracle Database Enterprise Edition because we're paying annual support. The second screenshot shows the two linked Discovery Models to this Software Model based on the conditions we made.
Step 4 - Create a Software Entitlement
Step 4 Details: The Software Entitlement License Metric value determines how the compliance calculation is performed.
Step 4 Table: alm_license
Step 4 Screenshot: Our Software Model we created is referenced to link our entitlements to the deployments. This linkage enable us to calculate a compliance position for Oracle DB Server Enterprise.
Step 5 - Run Reconciliation and check the License Workbench
Step 5 Details: Run reconciliation and validate the calculation is properly calculated.
Step 5 Table: Run reconciliation (Software Asset>Reconciliation>Run Reconciliation) License Workbench (Software Asset>Reconciliation>License Workbench)
Step 5 Screenshot: We own 50 entitlements and are consuming a total of 36 entitlements. This gives us a surplus of 14 extra Processor rights. The two virtual machine installations belong to different ESX servers, but the same vSphere cluster. The vSphere cluster has 3 ESX servers totaling 48 Intel Xeon cores and the standalone machine has 24 AMD Opteron cores. This is why the cluster is consuming 24 rights and the standalone machine is consuming 12.
Please let me know if you found this helpful and would like more complex licensing scenarios broken out.
Thank you,
Alex Panzarella - ITAM SC
