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I'll skip my sob story and just say Oracle has weird licensing, and because of this I'm trying to see if I can avoid buying three new ESX host servers by downgrading from 12 cores (6 licensed processors) to 8 core (4 licensed processors). The servers have Intel Xeon X5675 chips now.

What would the best 8 core processor to go replace them with? Also, has anyone else done this before?

John Gardeniers
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AndrewBurton
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    Your question is basically asking for a [shopping recommendation](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) which doesn't belong here. – Zoredache Apr 19 '12 at 00:30
  • I think detail on the licensing problem he's trying to solve will be beneficial. This is not a shopping question. It may be a misguided licensing question. – ewwhite Apr 19 '12 at 01:53
  • You're trying to license Oracle on VMWare? Good luck with that. Here's a fun game, contact a sales rep, give them your details and get them to give you a price. Then contact another rep and watch them give you a different price. You want high availability? Oh you need to license every CPU core the database could ever possibly exist for. I hate Oracle licensing =( – Smudge Apr 19 '12 at 01:54
  • Oh, unless you talk to them on a Tuesday and you stand upside down on a bin, in which case you don't need to license it at all but you need to buy Larry a chocolate chip muffin (This may not be 100% accurate, please don't quote it in a licensing audit) – Smudge Apr 19 '12 at 01:56

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I think this question would be more valid and acceptable for Server Fault if you explain the licensing problem you're trying to solve in greater detail.

The Intel X5675 is a 3.06GHz 6-core CPU. I'm assuming you're using two CPU's per system. Depending on the hardware you're running, it is possible to reduce disable half of the cores on the CPU in the BIOS. What type of servers are these? Dell? HP?

Your 4-core options for that CPU generation are the Intel X5687 or the Intel X5672, which are 3.6GHz and 3.2GHz, respectively. You can also use a handful of slower CPUs, like the E5620, but that's a step down.

Oracle is popular and has good mindshare here. I have not heard of anyone needing to go to 4-core CPUs to fix licensing problems.

Please also see my answer at: Disable CPU cores in bios?

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ewwhite
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  • Licensing problems are outside the remit of SF too http://serverfault.com/questions/215405/can-you-help-me-with-my-software-licensing-issue and meta discussion refer. – user9517 Apr 19 '12 at 07:54
  • The same question was asked a different way in: http://serverfault.com/questions/92225/disable-cpu-cores-in-bios – ewwhite Apr 19 '12 at 08:23