ORACLE AUDIT SAFETY STEPS

HOW To GET PREPARED FOR ORACLE AUDIT

Oracle Audit is like earthquake. We all have faced Oracle audit in our career. I want to share below steps those can be very helpful when you faced Audit. I will try to elaborate all points in simple and easy way.

I am not saying that after reading this you will easily clear the audit but by using following steps but you may minimize the risks and time of the AUDIT. I am working from last 5 years as ORACLE APPS DBA and I know its not long time :).

We need to work proactively in case of oracle AUDIT. One secret is, always keep AUDIT in your mind before implementing anything new like H/W changes. As we all know ORACLE is not having very friendly reputation e.g. you will never get a perfect solution for licencing .Many cases are there in market where sales guys sold meaning less software to costumers (ORACLE). OK that is a different story.

Let's get back to the topic.

Prepare your self

1. Be careful about the HARDWARE up gradation.

This is very important and you need to take more care about H/W. For example If we upgrade our DB server with One more CORE,We all know that this is going to cost us in DB licensing. Also Oracle will always want to know what your new platform is or what have you changed after licence agreement, This will be Oracle 's first check to you. In this case either you need to give them all information proactively or an audit is coming. So be aware of hardware up-gradation.

2. virtual software in your Oracle data centers also can cause 

Check Your data center of virtual software. If you are now using any virtualization technologies that were not previously in your Oracle environment, it will certainly lead to additional licensing needs. And Yes its sad but you need to pay to oracle. So be careful about the virtualization in ORACLE DC.

3. Oracle 10 days rule is trap in some cases 

We all believe in Oracle 10 days rule right? sometimes that work like trap. Many cases reported that Oracle charge a lot of money to some costumers because they took 10 days rule wrongly.Also,make sure you know your environment before Oracle looks into this.You need to clear the doubts against Oracle 10 days rule.

I will explain Oracle 10 days rule in different post.

4.Keep checking your license agreement metrics. 

In the gap of three or six months keep eye on your license agreement metrics and your support renewals as this will play a major role in auditing. It will be ease for you and for oracle as well.

5. we careful about your production clones and test/development environment

Its very normal scenario, We all keep multiple sets of production like for an example we use to keep backup server and DR server which we think we are safe with (myth) and always try to hide (most of the cases failed) and also on last UAT and DEV servers. If you are using mentioned scenarios then I suggest you to read licence agreement very carefully. I know time is valuable asset you have and its worth more then money but you need spend some of your valuable time to save real money. To be honest that money is real big.

6. Keep eye on your third party vendors 

I know we all choose our vendors very carefully because a lot of money involved and also sometime we don't want extra pressure of DB on our shoulders so we hire a third party vendor. That is itself a challenge now a days, because Oracle licence policy its self very complex. If your vendor is changing anything on DB side and that is impacting the licensing you need to be aware and keep asking your vendor about this.

As till 5 years of experience, I have seen many clients, they really don't care about licencing, Some of them using DB on production without licences.Yes it is true. Oracle is going to catch them soon that i know.

Anyways this all i know . If you guys want any changes then please drop message. I will consider or your point on this post. So it will be easy for others too.

Keep sharing ;) keep troubleshooting  :)