Oracle Offers Custom Intel Chips and Unanticipated Costs
jfruh (300774) writes "For some time, Intel has been offering custom-tweaked chips to big customers. While most of the companies that have taken them up on this offer, like Facebook and eBay, put the chips into servers meant for internal use, Oracle will now be selling systems running on custom Xeons directly to end users. Those customers need to be careful about how they configure those systems, though: in the new Oracle 12c, the in-memory database option, which costs $23,000 per processor, is turned on by default."
Here is a flow chart to decide whether to buy Oracle products:
<Do you enjoy being utterly fucked over?> Yes--> Buy Oracle. No--> Run for the hills.
I've been at two places which have been Oracle'd. It's like being pwn3d except you end up $10,000,000 poorer. You also end up with less dignity than the inevitable tebagging you might get in Halo.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
$23k is nothing but pennies to an oracle shop.
Posting anon as I'm a unix sysadmin in an oracle shop.
The whole point of going in-memory inside the main 12c database is that sometimes the alternative to the $23k (list price; negotiate 60-90% off that) is buying a new CPU and licensing the whole database ( + options + OS + etc -> far far more than $23k) on that.
So although normally I bemoan Oracle's exceedingly unfriendly licensing model on this occasion it's not terribly surprising.
If they really did mind about a $23k option enabled by default on each CPU, they would not be Oracle customers, would they?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I can only assume that 'failed to uncheck the checkbox' is exactly the sort of mutual agreement that contract law enjoys talking about the importance of, if not actually acting on it...
This is what I'd expect from Oracle's "Well, how much ya got?" mafia-style pricing.
Just turn a copy of your books to your sales contact Vinnie 'flat table' Malone and he'll let you know how much of your gross will be required to keep your data safe.
(Such a nice data warehouse you have there. It would be terrible if something.. Unfortunate would happen to it)
Fully agree. The two links cited in summary are totally unrelated to each other and the second link has nothing to do with the title of the story. The only commonality between the two is that both are anti-Oracle. Nice job Dell, HP, EMC.
This being slashdot, it would be nice to have the article on "gotcha" licensing accompanied by at least as much information what it actually is, and when it would be worth paying for. (And not just some snarky comments about how cheaper databases already have in-memory tables, unless that's really all it is!)
The link appears to be made in TFA (the first one):
So the chip is great for things like in-memory databases and it's from Oracle. So the warning about that combination might be a bit over-the-top but not totally out of the blue.
Anyone who buys solutions deserved to be parted with their money.
This is like pennies to someone that can afford to run Oracle on custom hardware. Why is this even newsworthy?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
http://www.datacenterdynamics....
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
Reading the article it seemed pretty pro Oracle in that they have a unique offering their competitors cannot get that is tailored to their database software. The idea that the processors can activate cores on their own doesn't seem to be an issue as the up charge is per processor. Maybe I'm ignorant and having multicore systems be treated as a multiprocessor system, but the person licensing should be fully aware when buying grossly overpriced hardware to run their grossly overpriced software what they are getting in to and will happily pay for the performance.
So, basically, the "tuning" is just giving them a way to trade active cores for speed, changing on-the-fly without restarting. More cores active, slower speed each. Less cores active, faster speed each.
Kinda nifty, I think. Not sure why it should be limited only to Oracle, though. Seems like a performance idea with broad appeal and utility.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Seriously, does anyone check their facts any more? By default it is turned off. You have to allocate some memory to the In-Memory Column Store by setting the INMEMORY_SIZE parameter and restarting the database. This is not going to happen by accident.
The parameter that is being discussed (INMEMORY_QUERY) which is enabled by default does nothing if no memory is allocated. You only get charged for the option if you turn it on by allocating the memory. This INMEMORY_QUERY parameter is not part of that issue.
Someone has taken something out of context and run with it. Now it has taken on a life of its own. Quality journalism!
His name US Ellison, not Ellis. He's one of the top money men for the democrat party. Look it up.
http://www.opensecrets.org/ind...
Any perceived slight against them by a customer invites an audit of epic proportions.
My organization just wrote them a 7 figure check due to some sprawl in our environment that wasn't properly handled.
We did it proactively, through a partner, and held off the 8 figure check we might have had to write.
I'm not that guy, but I know his world.
As ORacle controls MySQL, it might be free but for how long eh?
worth thinking about.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Oracle's pricing is predatory nonsense. Anyone worth their salt has moved to MySQL, postgresql and most importantly NoSQL databases. Only old school IT is likely to put up with 23K per processor in today's multicore and highly distributed environment. And the last time I worked with Oracle RDBMS it still had a large number of the same warts I hated in their product way back in the 80s.
Just say NO!
Our University uses it... Biggest money pit we have.
Who cares multiple fork exist today and will continue the job even if Oracle pull the plug.