Licensing Oracle on Nutanix is one of the most misunderstood topics we encounter. Between misinformation from Oracle sales reps, outdated “best practices” from third-party licensing advisors, and unclear interpretations of contractual language, many organizations end up over-licensing and overspending.

At House of Brick, we’ve guided clients through hundreds of Oracle license audits—and we know the difference between fact and fear. Below, we debunk the top five misconceptions about running Oracle on Nutanix.

Misconception 1 – All Physical Hosts on Nutanix AHV That Are Capable of Running Oracle Must be Licensed.

False

This concept is often referred to as full capacity licensing, or galaxy licensing.  This statement is incorrect if you base your licensing decisions on the written Oracle agreement.  It is understandable why some of our clients think this is gospel because the Oracle sales team, as well as some third-party companies that claim to be experts on Oracle licensing, preach this same dogma.  The Oracle contract states that the Oracle software must be licensed on all hosts where the binaries are “installed and/or running”.  There is nothing prospective, or future tense, about the licensing terms.  We need to license Oracle where we have the software installed.  From a Nutanix standpoint, that means any virtual machine with Oracle software installed counts towards your license liability.  Meaning, you must count all cores on the host where these virtual machines are running.  But you do not have to count hosts that have no virtual machines with Oracle software installed.

Misconception 2 – Oracle Does Not Recognize Certain License Containment Strategies, Like Clusters or Affinity Rules.

False… mostly.

Certain teams within Oracle corporation preach that only Oracle-approved configurations are allowed for license containment.  They will tell you that you have to license all nodes that form the cluster where Oracle is running.  Again, third-party licensing “experts” also preach this nonsense.  Back to the point I made in Misconception 1, the written agreement is the source of truth when it comes to counting where your licenses are running.  If you properly configure your Nutanix environment, then sub-capacity licensing is perfectly acceptable and fits withing the definitions in your contract.  House of Brick has helped clients through hundreds of Oracle audits, and we have never lost the argument on this topic.

So, while it’s true that Oracle will tell you that it doesn’t recognize certain containment technologies, the contract is very clear about where you must license the Oracle software.

Misconception 3 – You Must Alter Your Shared Storage Configuration to Satisfy Oracle Licensing.

False

The concept here is to limit the Oracle licensing counts by segmenting the storage where your Oracle virtual machines are running. In other words, only present storage to specific physical hosts where you have Oracle virtual machines configured. This topic is often brought up in the context of Oracle-approved sub-capacity conversations. This is not a requirement to be in license compliance. The Oracle contract does not specify how you configure your storage. The Oracle contract is processor centric so you must be concerned about the processors where you have Oracle installed, not your storage configuration.

Misconception 4 – You Must License Every Host in a Nutanix AHV Cluster.

False

This is maybe the biggest misconception of all when it comes to Nutanix AHV. There are two main technology levers that Nutanix provides to limit your licensing liability on AHV clusters.

The first is affinity rules. Affinity rules pin virtual machines to physical hosts. When these rules are properly configured, the virtual machines are pinned to specific physical hosts and are incapably of running on any other hosts in the cluster.This satisfies the contractual language of “installed and/or running”. Since the Oracle software is only installed on the hosts that are running these virtual machines, the hosts that are not, and cannot, run those virtual machines do not require a license. I feel like I’m being very redundant, but it is intentional, this satisfies the language in the written agreement.

Example: If you have a Nutanix cluster with five nodes, each with two sockets (10 cores per socket), the total number of cores in the cluster is 100. If you use affinity rules to pin your Oracle virtual machines to two hosts, your licensing liability is 40 physical cores. Using the Oracle core factor table, this would require 20 Oracle processor licenses, not 50 for the entire cluster.

The second mechanism is the concept of Compute-Only/Storage-Only clusters. In this configuration, AHV allows you to set up certain physical hosts as storage-only hosts.  These hosts only serve up I/O to the cluster and are incapable of running virtual machines. I have actually heard people argue that these hosts require an Oracle license, even though they are incapable of running virtual machines with the Oracle software installed. This directly contradicts the contract and is an absolutely absurd argument. The storage-only hosts DO NOT require any Oracle licenses.

Misconception 5 – Soft Partitioning is Not Allowed by Oracle for License Containment.

False… mostly

First, let me explain what the term soft partitioning means. Soft partitioning refers to the allocations of fewer physical resources to a machine, in this case a virtual machine, than the physical host has available. So, if a physical host has 32 physical cores and a virtual machine on this host has 4 vCPUs, then the virtual machine has been soft partitioned to 4 processors. Saying soft partitioning is not allowed means that we can’t just count the 4 vCPUs towards our licensing liability. By strict wording of the contract, saying that soft partitioning is not allowed is a pretty tough argument to make. Again, the wording in the contract states, “Processor: shall be defined as all processors where the Oracle programs are installed and/or running”.  If you were to use a technology to pin your virtual machine’s vCPUs to specific physical cores on a host, it would be hard to make the argument that this violates the contract.  

However, House of Brick does not recommend using virtual machine processor affinity for license containment as it is too easy to break this configuration and put yourself in a licensing  problem if the affinity is broken.

Instead, we recommend licensing all of the cores in a physical host. Where House of Brick differs from others is that we do recommend sub-cluster licensing as a valid license containment technology.  Take the Nutanix concept of Compute Only/Storage Only clusters. Since the storage-only nodes can only serve up I/O to the cluster, it is impossible to run any virtual machines on these nodes.  Therefore, you only need to count the compute-only nodes towards your license liability.

Conclusion: Contract Language, Not Fear, Drives Compliance

Multiple times in the blog I have stated that you should follow the plain language of the Oracle contract. At House of Brick, we base all of our advice to clients on the written agreement, not the opinion of some sales guy trying to make his quarterly bonus. Some people think it’s risky or tricky to license Oracle on Nutanix AHV.  This may be true if you listen to Oracle’s FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). But, if you read your contract, it is very clear.  License all processors where you have Oracle software installed.

If you’re unsure whether your Nutanix Oracle licensing strategy is truly compliant or whether you’re overpaying, our experts can review your configuration. We will provide a compliance roadmap and support you in any future audit.