This blog post covers how Oracle Sharding is licensed for On-premises and Oracle Cloud deployments.

Q: How is Oracle Sharding Licensed for On-premises?

A: For a sharded database (SDB) with 3 or fewer primary shards, Oracle Sharding is included with EE (includes Data Guard). No limit on number of standby shards.

For an SDB with more than 3 primary shards, in addition to EE, all shards must be licensed either for Active Data Guard, Oracle GoldenGate or RAC.

So if your licensing agreement covers EE and one of the HA options – Active Data Guard or Oracle GoldenGate or RAC, you can use Oracle Sharding at no additional cost.

Q: How is Oracle Sharding Licensed for Oracle Cloud (PaaS)?

A: With DBCS EE and DBCS EE-High Performance (HP), use is limited to three primary shards. (No limit on number of standby shards)

With DBCS EE-Extreme Performance (EP) and Exadata Cloud Service (ECS), there is no limit on the number of primary shards or standby shards.

Q: What is the Sharding BYOL model for Oracle Cloud (IaaS)?

A: For a sharded database (SDB) with 3 or fewer primary shards, Oracle Sharding is included with EE (includes Data Guard). No limit on number of standby shards. For the 3 primary shards, if Active Data Guard, Oracle GoldenGate or RAC are required for these shards, they ought to be licensed accordingly.

For an SDB with more than 3 primary shards, in addition to EE, all shards must be licensed either for Active Data Guard, Oracle GoldenGate or RAC.

Ref: Oracle Database Licensing Information User Manual, 12c Release 2 (12.2)