RDS for Oracle licensing options - Amazon Relational Database Service
License IncludedBring Your Own License (BYOL)Licensing Oracle Multi-AZ deployments
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

RDS for Oracle licensing options

Amazon RDS for Oracle has two licensing options: License Included (LI) and Bring Your Own License (BYOL). After you create an Oracle DB instance on Amazon RDS, you can change the licensing model by modifying the DB instance. For more information, see Modifying an Amazon RDS DB instance.

Important

Make sure that you have the appropriate Oracle Database license, with Software Update License and Support, for your DB instance class and Oracle Database edition. Also make sure that you have licenses for any separately licensed Oracle Database features.

License Included

In the License Included model, you don't need to purchase Oracle Database licenses separately. Amazon holds the license for the Oracle database software. In this model, if you have an Amazon Web Services Support account with case support, contact Amazon Web Services Support for both Amazon RDS and Oracle Database service requests. The License Included model is only supported on Amazon RDS for Oracle Database Standard Edition Two (SE2). Your use of RDS for Oracle the LI option is subject to Section 10.3.1 of the Amazon Service Terms.

Bring Your Own License (BYOL)

In the BYOL model, you can use your existing Oracle Database licenses to deploy databases on Amazon RDS. Make sure that you have the appropriate Oracle Database license (with Software Update License and Support) for the DB instance class and Oracle Database edition you wish to run. You must also follow Oracle's policies for licensing Oracle Database software in the cloud computing environment. For more information on Oracle's licensing policy for Amazon EC2, see Licensing Oracle software in the cloud computing environment.

In this model, you continue to use your active Oracle support account, and you contact Oracle directly for Oracle Database service requests. If you have an Amazon Web Services Support account with case support, you can contact Amazon Web Services Support for Amazon RDS issues. Amazon Web Services and Oracle have a multi-vendor support process for cases that require assistance from both organizations.

Amazon RDS supports the BYOL model only for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition (EE) and Oracle Database Standard Edition Two (SE2).

Integrating with Amazon License Manager

To make it easier to monitor Oracle license usage in the BYOL model, Amazon License Manager integrates with Amazon RDS for Oracle. License Manager supports tracking of RDS for Oracle engine editions and licensing packs based on virtual cores (vCPUs). You can also use License Manager with Amazon Organizations to manage all of your organizational accounts centrally.

The following table shows the product information filters for RDS for Oracle.

Filter

Name

Description

Engine Edition

oracle-ee

Oracle Database Enterprise Edition (EE)

oracle-se2

Oracle Database Standard Edition Two (SE2)

License Pack

data guard

See Working with read replicas for Amazon RDS for Oracle (Oracle Active Data Guard)

olap

See Oracle OLAP

ols

See Oracle Label Security

diagnostic pack sqlt

See Oracle SQLT

tuning pack sqlt

See Oracle SQLT

To track license usage of your Oracle DB instances, you can create a license configuration. In this case, RDS for Oracle resources that match the product information filter are automatically associated with the license configuration. Discovery of Oracle DB instances can take up to 24 hours.

To create a license configuration to track the license usage of your Oracle DB instances

  1. Go to https://console.amazonaws.cn/license-manager/.

  2. Create a license configuration.

    For instructions, see Create a license configuration in the Amazon License Manager User Guide.

    Add a rule for an RDS Product Information Filter in the Product Information panel.

    For more information, see ProductInformation in the Amazon License Manager API Reference.

To create a license configuration by using the Amazon CLI, call the create-license-configuration command. Use the --cli-input-json or --cli-input-yaml parameters to pass the parameters to the command.

Example

The following code creates a license configuration for Oracle Enterprise Edition. 

aws license-manager create-license-configuration -cli-input-json file://rds-oracle-ee.json

The following is the sample rds-oracle-ee.json file used in the example.

{
    "Name": "rds-oracle-ee",
    "Description": "RDS Oracle Enterprise Edition",
    "LicenseCountingType": "vCPU",
    "LicenseCountHardLimit": false,
    "ProductInformationList": [
        {
            "ResourceType": "RDS",
            "ProductInformationFilterList": [
                {
                    "ProductInformationFilterName": "Engine Edition",
                    "ProductInformationFilterValue": ["oracle-ee"],
                    "ProductInformationFilterComparator": "EQUALS"
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

For more information about product information, see Automated discovery of resource inventory in the Amazon License Manager User Guide.

For more information about the --cli-input parameter, see Generating Amazon CLI skeleton and input parameters from a JSON or YAML input file in the Amazon CLI User Guide.

Migrating between Oracle editions

If you have an unused BYOL Oracle license appropriate for the edition and class of DB instance that you plan to run, you can migrate from Standard Edition 2 (SE2) to Enterprise Edition (EE). You can't migrate from Enterprise Edition to other editions.

To change the edition and retain your data

  1. Create a snapshot of the DB instance.

    For more information, see Creating a DB snapshot.

  2. Restore the snapshot to a new DB instance, and select the Oracle database edition you want to use.

    For more information, see Restoring from a DB snapshot.

  3. (Optional) Delete the old DB instance, unless you want to keep it running and have the appropriate Oracle Database licenses for it.

    For more information, see Deleting a DB instance.

Licensing Oracle Multi-AZ deployments

Amazon RDS supports Multi-AZ deployments for Oracle as a high-availability, failover solution. We recommend Multi-AZ for production workloads. For more information, see Configuring and managing a Multi-AZ deployment.

If you use the Bring Your Own License model, you must have a license for both the primary DB instance and the standby DB instance in a Multi-AZ deployment.