Demystifying Oracle RAC Licensing

Understanding Oracle RAC Licensing is an essential part of managing your Oracle investment. The Real Application Clusters (RAC) is a powerful software solution that offers high availability and scalability for Oracle databases.

This article provides a comprehensive guide to Oracle RAC, its main features, the key components included in the package, the licensing metrics available, and the related costs. We’ll also delve into some frequently asked questions for additional insights.

Main Features of Oracle RAC

The Oracle RAC is renowned for its robust feature set that equips organizations with the necessary tools for exceptional database management. Key features include:

1. Scalability: Oracle RAC allows for the horizontal scaling of databases across multiple servers, enabling organizations to effectively manage an increasing data load.
2. High Availability: With Oracle RAC, businesses can maintain continuous database availability, even in the event of hardware or software failure.
3. Load Balancing: Oracle RAC optimally distributes the load across all available instances, improving performance and efficiency.
4. Fault Tolerance: Oracle RAC can recover swiftly from hardware or software failures, ensuring minimum downtime.

Main Components Included in Oracle RAC

Oracle RAC consists of several components, including:

• Oracle Database: The primary part where all data is stored and managed.
• Oracle Clusterware: This component manages high-availability operations and is essential to establish a clustered environment for Oracle RAC.
• Automatic Storage Management (ASM): ASM simplifies database file management by controlling the file system’s metadata.
• Cluster Synchronization Services (CSS): CSS monitors and maintains synchronization services for Oracle RAC.
• Cluster Ready Services (CRS): CRS manages high-availability operations in a clustered environment.

Delving Deeper into Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC)

Oracle RAC has various cost options and inclusions, accommodating various organizational needs. Specifically, it is available as an extra cost option for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition (EE) and Oracle Database Enterprise Edition – Exadata (EE-Exa). In addition, it comes as an included option for Oracle Database Standard Edition 2 (SE2), Oracle Database Cloud Service Enterprise Edition – Extreme Performance (DBCS EE-EP), and Exadata Cloud Service/Cloud at Customer (ExaCS/CC).

Oracle RAC is renowned for its rich suite of features, some of which are as follows:

• Complete Oracle RAC One Node Features: Oracle RAC includes all the features offered by Oracle RAC One Node, thus providing a comprehensive solution for your database management needs.
• Multi-Server Scaling with Real Application Clusters: This feature allows businesses to scale their applications across multiple servers effortlessly, enhancing their capacity to handle larger workloads.
• Connection Load Balancing: Oracle RAC intelligently balances a load of connections to the database, ensuring optimal performance and avoiding any single point of overloading.
• Fast Connection Failover: This feature ensures that connections are quickly switched to a functioning instance in the event of a failure, minimizing downtime.
• Hot Cluster Failover: Oracle RAC enables a smooth transition during system failover situations, ensuring that your database remains available and your business operations are uninterrupted.

Oracle RAC Licensing

Oracle offers two main licensing metrics for RAC: Processor Licensing and Named User Plus Licensing. RAC operates as an add-on license to Oracle Database Enterprise Edition (DB EE); the RAC license quantity and metric must match the DB Enterprise Edition license.

For instance, if your Oracle DB EE is licensed per processor, your Oracle RAC must also be licensed per processor.

• Processor Licensing: This type of licensing is based on the total number of processors used. To apply this, one must consult the Oracle Core Factor Table.
• Named User Plus Licensing: In this case, licenses are granted to individual users. The number of Named User Plus licenses must equal the number of users accessing the Oracle Database.

Remember, all nodes in a cluster must have Oracle RAC licenses.

Oracle RAC License Costs

The cost of Oracle RAC licensing depends on the chosen metric:

• The Named User Plus license costs $460 per Named User Plus.
• The Processor License costs $23,000 per Processor.

Remember, these prices may vary, and it is always best to consult with Oracle or an authorized Oracle reseller for the most accurate pricing information.

FAQs on Oracle RAC