Can VirtualBox be used to reduce per-CPU costs of Oracle?

[cagils]

Hello,

This is my first post here. I've heard that VirtualBox is being used with per-CPU-licensed commercial software like Oracle to reduce the licensing costs. I imagine, this is achieved by showing many CPUs as a single virtual CPU in the virtualization environment; and then somehow the licensing procedure of Oracle permits it to be considered as a single-cpu system or something like that. Is this information correct and we can use VirtualBox for that purpose? If so, what can be the pros and cons of that method, can anybody tell me? Thank you!

[Sasquatch]

VirtualBox gives ONE CPU to the Guest by default, but if you have the right hardware, you can give it more CPUs (or cores if you like). When you don't change any settings, VB will be able to use the full performance of just ONE core/CPU on the Host. Setting it to allow more CPUs to be visible inside the Guest, would raise the licensing costs of your Oracle application. You will not get your full Host performance with just one core. Even if you give it all cores/CPUs, it will still be a bit slower because of the virtualization layer.

So, you can do what you ask, it only drops the performance too of the app you're running, because it can't use the full extend of your hardware.

[Martin]

Oracle doesn't accept virtual CPU restrictions in their licensing model. You have to buy licenses for all physical CPUs of your host system.

[mpack]

but if you have the right hardware, you can give it more CPUs (or cores if you like).

I'm confused - is this discussion about multiple CPUs or multiple cores? The two concepts are not the same, and the distinction could make a big difference to licensing terms.

This PC I'm using now has one CPU, which contains two cores.

[Sasquatch]

I have no idea how Oracle calculates the license fee, but I thought there was a discussion some time ago about multi core CPU's being treated as more than one CPU and that wasn't right or something.

It seems that Martin is correct, you can have four cores, but you only pay for one CPU license.

I think this forum isn't the right place to discuss this, this should be in the Oracle forums.

[cagils]

Thanks for all the responses. However, Sasquatch, your post confused me a little. I know that Virtual Box can use more than one CPU (btw I am talking about CPUs here, not Cores); but I'm trying to learn if we can make the guest OS see all of the CPUs as ONE combined virtual cpu by settings.

martin, thanks, if what you're saying is true, than I suppose the above ability would not be much useful in that context; and I agree this part is not the part of the discussion in this forum; I was just querying the ability of CPU virtualization. Thanks again..

[Sasquatch]

For your question to let the Guest see one CPU while actually using more CPU's (VB can also give more cores to a Guest, they are the same for VB) is not possible.

[cagils]

Oh ok, now that clears it up for me. Thank you Sasquatch