The University of Victoria has recently completed a wholesale migration of Oracle database workloads from a self-hosted Campus Wide License to Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer (ExaCC). UVic had licensed Oracle products under a perpetual Campus-Wide License (CWL) since approximately 2005. While this model affords the ability to install additional databases for new and existing applications with no additional licensing cost, Oracle recently increased their CWL annual renewal increases to 8% with no additional functionality which detracts from the appeal of this model, especially given decreasing workloads due to cloud migrations.
Oracle’s Exadata Cloud at Customer (ExaCC) is a compelling alternative to CWL. Rather than just a database license and support, where UVic must provide its own hardware and operating system support, ExaCC is essentially a lease of database hardware appliances plus licenses and support, at an annual cost lower than the current campus wide license maintenance. Moreover, ExaCC includes all of Oracle’s advanced security and database management features, which UVic has previously been unable to afford. Moreover ExaCC provides the potential for additional cost savings as applications migrate to the cloud.
In this presentation Garry Sagert and Scott Thompson present UVic’s experience with ExaCC to date.
