Presently, depending on the applied Hypervisor version, it is required to license either the cluster, all hosts within reach of the Management Console, or the complete virtual infrastructure. For VMware up to version 5.0 this implies the cluster, from version 5.1 the vCenter, and from version 6.0 the complete virtual infrastructure has to be licensed (as we reported earlier).
According to Mendelsohn there are signs that the segmentation of the Hypervisor or VM environment by means of VLAN technology is increasingly being accepted.
The advantage of segmenting virtual nets into logical groups is a separation of the environments without affecting data communication. The VLAN can therefore be taken as a limitation of the range subject to licensing, which means that only the host server within a VLAN has to be licensed, since it is not possible with known Hypervisor technologies to shift virtual machines in operation beyond the edge of a VLAN.
Analogously, the VLAN solution applies to all Hypervisor providers that allow the shifting of virtual machines in operation beyond cluster boundaries.
Currently, this has to be approved by Oracle by means of a single approval procedure.
This is not yet the general solution expected by the user groups and many customers and partners.
Nevertheless, DOAG, SOUG, and AOUG expressly welcome this as a major step and encourage their members to make use of this option, although they do advise to document and archive the behavior of the virtual machines with systems logs.
In conclusion, however, the user groups still wish for a general and uniform solution.
