Does the target for Double-Take replication require an Oracle license? [closed]

Question

Where would Vision Solution's Double-Take product fall with regard to Oracle Licensing? It is both a backup and a replication of the database. Oracle's Software Investment Guide has a section on Backup, Standby, Failover, and Remote Mirroring. My concern is that this product would fall under remote mirroring and the server would need to be licensed.

Answer 1

We had a conference call with our Oracle Technology Sales Manager and an Oracle Solution Consultant. We discussed the Double-Take setup and they were able to confirm that based on the way we have our DR site setup and our primary site licensed, we do NOT need to license the DR site. This is of course assuming we do not deviate from the setup we discussed with them. This somewhat surprised me and should in no way be looked at as an indicator Oracle's stance on Double-Take for any other installation than ours.

Answer 2

From the document, the important paragraph is:

To setup a remote mirroring environment, the Oracle data files, executables, binaries and DLLs are replicated to the mirrored storage unit. Solutions like Veritas Volume Replicator, EMC SRDF, Legato Replistor, and EMS StoreEdge are used to mirror the data stored on the disk arrays.

Emphasis mine. If you are just mirroring the DBFs then that's one thing, but if you can ever "activate" that standby, then it must be licensed.

If the Oracle Database is accessing the data from the primary disk array and it is not accessing the mirrored disk array, but it is installed on the mirrored network storage unit, then both database must be fully licensed and the same metric must be used

I don't think they will let you get away with having a copy of the Oracle CDs at the remote site with the instructions "only install in event of failure" either :-)