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We've had a bunch of VMWare clusters consisting of 5-6 servers each, maybe something like 2x16 cores or 2x32 cores for each server and 384 to 768Go of RAM, I'm

We've had a bunch of VMWare clusters consisting of 5-6 servers each, maybe something like 2x16 cores or 2x32 cores for each server and 384 to 768Go of RAM, I'm not sure about the specifics. We had VMs running a few Oracle databases, nothing much more than 2 cores 16Gb or 4 cores 32Gb, the vast majority (90%+) of our databases were running Sybase, and half the resources were for the app, so something like 5% of those clusters were Oracle dbs. We were paying Sybase maybe 100k a year for the entire datacenter, and so we expected to pay something between 10k and 100k for Oracle (remember, for 1/20th of the compute and with a developer license because we were not hosting client production). We asked for a quote to Oracle, they came back a week later with a 520 million dollar bill, more than the revenue of our entire company. It was never paid of course but this shows how absolutely ridiculous their template is for billing. The reasoning is well known now, a 2 core database can run on potentially 6 servers * 32 cores * 2 threads per core = 384 possible cores, so if you have 2 or 3 databases you can potentially get billed a license for 1000 cores (and actually running 6 non-production database = 0 service on their part because if it breaks you just redeploy it, it's faster than opening a support ticket).

bombcar 4y ago
Part of that is playing the game; Oracle knows to come in high on the quote so the CTO can negotiate them down from batshit insane to simply eye wateringly painful. Looks great on the year end report!
perfecthjrjth 4y ago
That's why there are consulting companies specialized in Oracle licensing. Just hire one of such consulting companies, instead of dealing with Oracle directly.
- SauciestGNU 4y ago
  I may be just a simple engineer with mostly postgres experience but why in hell would businesses go through all this pain for oracle's db product when there are all sorts of alternatives? Is the product really that much better?
  - maeil 4y ago
    I'm sure someone will chime in with direct experience wrt Oracle, but most cases where it looks like many companies are overpaying by >5 times for a certain service or product compared to the value it delivers are similar. Such decisions are commonly made (or at least signed off on) by upper management who are paying so much purely for CYA reasons. The old "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". Another related but distinct reason is box-ticking purchasing decisions. Decision makers who 1. aren't the end users 2. lack technical knowledge 3. are overconfident and overweigh their own opinion, are likely to decide between products purely based on the number of feature boxes it ticks, regardless of their real-life usability and usefulness. Companies like Oracle know this and cater to it. They don't care if a new feature is useless or poorly implemented as long as it creates a new box that makes the decision makers 0.5% more likely to go with their product.

bombcar 4y ago

Part of that is playing the game; Oracle knows to come in high on the quote so the CTO can negotiate them down from batshit insane to simply eye wateringly painful. Looks great on the year end report!

perfecthjrjth 4y ago

That's why there are consulting companies specialized in Oracle licensing. Just hire one of such consulting companies, instead of dealing with Oracle directly.

SauciestGNU 4y ago
I may be just a simple engineer with mostly postgres experience but why in hell would businesses go through all this pain for oracle's db product when there are all sorts of alternatives? Is the product really that much better?
- maeil 4y ago
  I'm sure someone will chime in with direct experience wrt Oracle, but most cases where it looks like many companies are overpaying by >5 times for a certain service or product compared to the value it delivers are similar. Such decisions are commonly made (or at least signed off on) by upper management who are paying so much purely for CYA reasons. The old "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". Another related but distinct reason is box-ticking purchasing decisions. Decision makers who 1. aren't the end users 2. lack technical knowledge 3. are overconfident and overweigh their own opinion, are likely to decide between products purely based on the number of feature boxes it ticks, regardless of their real-life usability and usefulness. Companies like Oracle know this and cater to it. They don't care if a new feature is useless or poorly implemented as long as it creates a new box that makes the decision makers 0.5% more likely to go with their product.