CISCO Configuring Smart Licensing Software User Guide

CISCO Configuring Smart Licensing Software

Product Information

Specifications

• Release: 7.0.11
• Feature History: Smart Licensing was introduced

What Is Smart Licensing?

Smart Licensing is a cloud-based, software license management solution that automates time-consuming, manual licensing tasks. It allows you to easily track the status of your license and software usage trends.

How Does Smart Licensing Work?

Smart Licensing involves three steps:

1. Direct cloud access: Cisco products send usage information directly over the internet to Cisco.com (Cisco license service) without additional components.
2. Direct cloud access through an HTTPs proxy: Cisco products send usage information over the internet through a proxy server (e.g., Smart Call Home Transport Gateway or off-the-shelf Proxy) to Cisco License Service on http://www.cisco.com.
3. Mediated access through an on-premises collector: Cisco products send usage information to a locally-connected collector, which acts as a local license authority. Periodically, the information is exchanged to keep the databases in synchronization.

Deployment Options for Smart Licensing

The following deployment options are available for Smart Licensing:

1. Direct cloud access: No additional components are needed for deployment.

2. Direct cloud access through an HTTPs proxy: Usage information is sent through a proxy server to Cisco License Service.

3. Mediated access through an on-premises collector-connected:
   Usage information is sent to a locally-connected collector acting as a local license authority.

4. Mediated access through an on-premises collector-disconnected:
   Usage information is sent to a local disconnected collector acting as a local license authority.

Options 1 and 2 provide an easy deployment option, and options 3 and 4 provide a secure environment deployment option. Smart Software Satellite supports options 3 and 4. The communication between Cisco products and Cisco license service is facilitated by the Smart Call Home software.

Product Usage Instructions

Configuring Smart Licensing

To configure Smart Licensing, follow these steps:

1. Step 1: Choose the appropriate deployment option based on your requirements.
2. Step 2: Enable Smart Licensing on your Cisco product.
3. Step 3: Set up direct cloud access or mediated access through an on-premises collector.
4. Step 4: Verify the configuration and ensure communication with Cisco license service is established.

FAQ

Q: Where can I find more information on Smart Licensing?

A: For more information on Smart Licensing and related documentation, visit
https://www.cisco.com/c/en_in/products/software/smart-accounts/software- licensing.html.

Q: What are the benefits of Smart Licensing?

A: Smart Licensing automates licensing tasks, simplifies license tracking, and provides software usage trends for better license management.

What Is Smart Licensing

Smart Licensing is a cloud-based, software license management solution that enables you to automate time-consuming, manual licensing tasks. The solution allows you to easily track the status of your license and software usage trends.
Smart Licensing helps simplify three core functions:

• Purchasing— The software that you have installed in your network can automatically selfregister themselves.
• Management— You can automatically track activations against your license entitlements. Also, there is no need to install the license file on every node. You can create license pools (logical grouping of licenses) to reflect your organization structure. Smart Licensing offers you Cisco Smart Software Manager, a centralized portal that enables you to manage all your Cisco software licenses from one centralized website. Cisco Smart Software Managerprovides details.
• Reporting— Through the portal, Smart Licensing offers an integrated view of the licenses you have purchased and what has been deployed in your network. You can use this data to make better purchase decisions, based on your consumption.

Note

• By default Smart Licensing is enabled.
• Supports only Flexible Consumption model Smart Licensing.

For more information on Smart Licensing and related documentation, see https://www.cisco.com/c/en_in/products/software/smart-accounts/software- licensing.html.

How Does Smart Licensing Works?

Smart Licensing involves the three steps that are shown in the following illustration, that depicts the working model of the Smart Licensing.
Figure 1: Smart Licensing – Example

• Setting up Smart Licensing— You can place the order for Smart Licensing, to manage licenses on Cisco.com portal. You agree to the terms and conditions governing the use and access of Smart Licensing in the Smart Software Manager portal.
• Enabling and Use Smart Licensing— Follow the steps to enable Smart Licensing. Smart Licensing Workflow provides an illustration.
• After you enable Smart Licensing, you can use either of the following options to communicate:
• Smart Call Home —The Smart Call Home feature is automatically configured after the router starts. Smart Call Home is used by Smart Licensing as a medium for communication with the Cisco license service. Call Home feature allows Cisco products to periodically call-home and perform an audit and reconciliation of your software usage information. This information helps Cisco efficiently track your install base, keep them up and running, and more effectively pursue service and support contract renewals, without much intervention from your end. For more information on Smart Call Home feature, see the Smart Call Home Deployment Guide.
• Smart Licensing Satellite— The Smart licensing satellite option provides an on-premises collector that can be used to consolidate and manage Smart license usage, as well facilitate communications back to Cisco License Service at Cisco.com.
• Manage and Report Licenses— You can manage and view reports about your overall software usage in the Smart Software Manager portal.

Deployment Options for Smart Licensing

The following illustration shows the various options available for deploying Smart Licensing:

Figure 2: Smart Licensing Deployment Options

1. Direct cloud access —In direct cloud access deployment method, Cisco products send usage information directly over the internet to Cisco.com (Cisco license service); no additional components are needed for deployment.

2. Direct cloud access through an HTTPs proxy —In direct cloud access through an HTTPs proxy deployment method, Cisco products send usage information over the internet through a proxy server -either a Smart Call Home Transport Gateway or off-the-shelf Proxy (such as Apache) to Cisco License Service on http://www.cisco.com.

3. Mediated access through an on-premises collector-connected —In mediated access through an
   on-premises collector-connected deployment method, Cisco products send usage information to a locally-connected collector, which acts as a local license authority. Periodically, the information is exchanged to keep the databases in synchronization.

4. Mediated access through an on-premises collector-disconnected— In the mediated access through an on-premises collector-disconnected deployment method, Cisco products send usage information to a local disconnected collector, which acts as a local license authority. Exchange of human-readable information is performed occasionally (maybe once a month) to keep the databases in synchronization.

Options 1 and 2 provide an easy deployment option, and options 3 and 4 provide a secure environment deployment option. Smart Software Satellite provides support for options 3 and 4.
The communication between Cisco products and Cisco license service is facilitated by the Smart Call Home software.

About Call Home

Call Home provides an email and http/https based notification for critical system policies. A range of message formats are available for compatibility with pager services or XML-based automated parsing applications. You can use this feature to page a network support engineer, email a Network Operations Center, or use Cisco Smart Call Home services to generate a case with the Technical Assistance Center. The Call Home feature can deliver alert messages containing information about diagnostics and environmental faults and events. The Call Home feature can deliver alerts to multiple recipients, referred to as Call Home destination profiles. Each profile includes configurable message formats and content categories. A predefined destination is provided for sending alerts to the Cisco TAC, but you also can define your own destination profiles. When you configure Call Home to send messages, the appropriate CLI show command is executed and the command output is attached to the message. Call Home messages are delivered in the following formats:

• Short text format which provides a one or two line description of the fault that is suitable for pagers or printed reports.
• Full text format which provides fully formatted message with detailed information that is suitable for human reading.
• XML machine readable format that uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Adaptive Messaging Language (AML) XML schema definition (XSD). The AML XSD is published on the Cisco.com website at http://www.cisco.com/. The XML format enables communication with the Cisco Systems Technical Assistance Center.

Flexible Consumption Model Licenses

Table 2: Feature History Table

Cisco Smart Licensing on QDD-400G-ZR-S and

QDD-400G-ZRP-S optics

| Release 7.9.1| Support for Smart Licensing is now extended to the hardware having

following optics:

•  QDD-400G-ZR-S

•  QDD-400G-ZRP-S

Smart Licensing uses Flexible Consumption licensing model. This model of licensing is available at low initial investment, provides easy scalability, and allows customers to increase consumption of licenses as they expand. Flexible Consumption model licenses are checked for usage on a daily basis. The daily license usage is reported to the Smart Licensing Manager at Cisco.com.
The Flexible Consumption model licensing for your hardware or software is enabled by default.

There are three types of licenses in this model:

• Essential licenses are the licenses that are required by every active port, for example
• ESS-CA-400G-RTU-2. These licenses support the pay as you grow model of flexible consumption model of licensing.
• Advantage (earlier known as Advanced) licenses are the licenses that are required for ports that use advanced features like L3VPN. Example of an advantage license is ADV-CA-400G-RTU-2. These licenses support the pay as you grow model of flexible consumption model of licensing.
• Tracking licenses, for example 8201-TRK. These licenses support systems and line cards and help you to understand the number of systems or line cards in use in a network.

The following table provides the supported hardware for different Flexible Consumption model licenses for Cisco 8000:

Note These licenses are platform dependent.

Table 3: FCM Licenses

or
•  ESS-CA-400G-RTU-2| Cisco 8201 Router| advantage licenses consumed

depends on the number of active

•  ESS-CA-100G-RTU-2| Modular port router:| ports and is reported on per chassis
•  ADV-CA-400G-RTU-2| Cisco 8812 Router| basis.
•  ADV-CA-100G-RTU-2|  |
Hardware Tracking Licenses that| These Tracking licenses are named| The number of licenses consumed
support chassis| on the basis of the hardware| depends on the number of line cards
•  8201-TRK| supported. For example, 8201-TRK

licenses support Cisco 8201 Router.

| in use.
•  8812-TRK|  |
•  8808-TRK|  |
•  8818-TRK|  |
•  8202-TRK|  |
•  8800-LC-48H-TRK|  |
•  8800-LC-36FH-TRK|  |
License Name| Hardware Supported| Consumption Pattern
---|---|---
Optics Tracking License| Fixed Boxes| The number of licenses used
•  100G-DCO-RTU| •  8201| depends on different coherent

modes. For example, 4 licenses will

 | •  8202| be used to enable 400G transponder
 | •  8201-32FH| and 4x100G Mux-ponder modes.

These licenses shall not apply to

 | •  8101-32FH| existing 100G/200G optics.
 | •  8101-32FH-O|
 | •  8201-32FH-M|
 | •  8201-32FH-MO|
 | •  8101-32H-O|
 | •  8102-64H-O|
 | •  8101-32H|
 | •  8102-64H|
 | •  8111-32EH|
 | •  8112-64FH|
 | •  8112-64FH-O|
 | Line cards:|
 | •  8800-LC-36FH|
 | •  88-LC0-36FH-M|
 | •  88-LC0-36FH-MO|
 | •  88-LC0-36FH|
 | •  88-LC0-36FH-O|
 | •  88-LC1-36EH|
 | •  88-LC1-36EH-O|
 | •  88-LC1-36FH-E|

Software Innovation Access

Table 4: Feature History Table

grants you access to the latest software upgrades which contain new features, bug fixes, and security enhancements for devices on your network. Also, it enables the consumption of Advantage and Essential Right-to-Use (RTU) licenses on your device, and allows portability of these RTU licenses

from one device to another.

Overview
Software Innovation Access (SIA) subscription, a type of FCM licensing, provides access to the latest software upgrades and features for your network. SIA licenses enable the consumption of Right-to-Use (RTU) licenses for your devices to access software innovation and avail support for your devices throughout the term of subscription.

The benefits of SIA subscription are:

• Access to software innovation: SIA subscription provides access to continuous software upgrades which contain latest features, security enhancements, and bug fixes for all your devices at a network level.
• Pooling of licenses: SIA subscription enables Right-to-Use (RTU) licenses to be shared across your FCM network from a common license pool through the virtual account.
• Protects your investment: SIA subscription enables the portability of perpetual RTU licenses purchased for your current device to a next-generation router when you expand or upgrade your network.

The initial term of a SIA subscription is for a term of three years. You can renew the subscription by contacting your Cisco account representative. An equal number of SIA licenses and corresponding RTU licenses are required to enjoy the benefits, and ensure that your network is in compliance. There are two types of SIA licenses available:

• To utilize Advantage RTU licenses, you need Advantage SIA licenses.
• Essential SIA licenses are required to utilise Essential RTU on your device.

If your device is in a state of SIA Out-of-Compliance (OOC) the benefits cease.

SIA Out-of-compliance (OOC) state
When your device is in a SIA Out-of-compliance state, support for major software version upgrades in your network devices are restricted. However, you can continue to perform minor updates, SMU installations, and RPM installations, and continue to utilize the RTU licenses without support for porting.

A device can get into a SIA Out-of-compliance (OOC) state in the following instances:

• The SIA License EVAL period of 90 days has expired.
• The number of SIA licenses consumed has exceeded the number of SIA licenses purchased. This can also occur when the RTU licenses consumed is higher than the number of SIA licenses purchased.
• The term of the SIA license has expired and you haven’t renewed the subscription.
• The license authorization status is:
  • Not Authorized: The license authorization code installed doesn’t contain sufficient counts for the request. This can occur when you attempt to use more licenses than the licenses available in your Virtual Account.
  • Authorization expired: The device hasn’t been able to connect to CSSM for an extended period, due to which the authorization status couldn’t be verified.
• Note
  The CSSM smart license hierarchy applies to the Right-to-Use (RTU) license only. Therefore, if there is an insufficient RTU 100G license, CSSM can convert the RTU 400G license into four RTU 100G licenses. This is not applicable for SIA license.

In order to bring your device to In-Compliance state, perform one of the following steps:

• Register your device with CSSM if the SIA license EVAL period has expired.
• If the SIA license has expired or the number of SIA licenses consumed is more than the number of SIA licenses purchased, contact your Cisco Account Representative to purchase or renew the required licenses.
• If the authorization code has insufficient counts for the request, generate the code with sufficient counts.
• If the authorization has expired, connect the device with CSSM.

Note

Up to Cisco IOS XR Release 7.3.1, Cisco 8000 series routers consume one 400G license per one 400G interface.
From Cisco IOS XR Release 7.3.2 onwards, Cisco 8000 series routers consume four 100G licenses per one 400G interface. If necessary, contact your Cisco Account Representative to convert SIA 400G license into four SIA 100G licenses.

When the device enters an OOC state, a grace period of 90 days (cumulative of all the previous occurences) begins. During this period, SIA license benefits can still be availed. The system attempts to renew the authorization period by connecting with the CSSM during the grace period, or even after the grace period has expired. If an attempt isn’t successful, it remains in an OOC state. If the attempt is successful, a new authorization period begins and the device is In-Compliance.

Verification

To verify the device compliance status, use the show license platform summary command:

Examples
Status: In-Compliance

Configure Licenses Using Smart Licensing

Register and Activate Your Device

Smart Licensing components are packaged into the 8000-x64-7.0.11.iso image. The https client that is required for configuring the Smart Call Home is packaged into the cisco8k-k9sec RPM. Use the steps described here to register and activate your device, and associate the device with your virtual account.

To register and activate your device, you must:

• Generate registration token from the Cisco Smart Software Manager portal at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/buy/smart-accounts/software-manager.html.
• Use the registration token to register your device using CLI.

Generate Product Registration Token from the Portal
You must have purchased the product for which you are adding the license. When you purchase the product, you are provided with a username and password to the Cisco Smart Software Manager portal, from where you can generate the product instance registration tokens.

1. Log in to Cisco Smart Software Manager at Smart Software Licensing.
2. Under Inventory menu, click General tab.
3. Click New Token to generate a product registration token.
4. Copy the new token value, which is used to register and activate your device, and associate the device to your virtual account.

Note
This token is valid for 365 days and can be used to register any number of Cisco routers . There is no need to create token every time for a new device.

Register New Product in CLI
In the CLI, use the registration token to activate the device.

On successful registration, the device receives an identity certificate. This certificate is saved on your device and automatically used for all future communications with Cisco. Every 290 days, Smart Licensing automatically renews the registration information with Cisco. If registration fails, an error is logged. Also, license usage data is collected and a report is sent to you every month. If necessary, you can configure your Smart Call Home settings such that sensitive information (like hostname, username and password) are filtered out from the usage report.

Note
In a Cisco 8000 distributed platform, you might see the following message when one or more line cards are shutdown using the hw-module command:

Check License Consumption Status

Use the show license commands to display the Smart Licensing status and consumption states.

Step 1

show license status
Example:

Displays the compliance status of Smart Licensing. Following are the possible status:

• Waiting—Indicates the initial state after your device has made a license entitlement request. The device establishes communication with Cisco and successfully registers itself with the Cisco Smart Software Manager.

• Authorized—Indicates that your device is able to communicate with the Cisco Smart Software Manager, and is authorised to initiate requests for license entitlements.

• Out-Of-Compliance—Indicates that one or more of your licenses are out-of-compliance. You must buy additional licenses.
  Note
  A warning message appears when a license is out-of-compliance. A log message is also saved in the syslog.

• Eval Period—Indicates that Smart Licencing is consuming the evaluation period. The eval period is valid until 90 days. You must register the device with the Cisco Smart Software Manager, else your license expires.

• Disabled—Indicates that Smart Licensing is disabled.

• Invalid—Indicates that Cisco does not recognize the entitlement tag as it is not in the database.

Step 2

show license all

Example:

Step 3

Displays all entitlements in use. Additionally, it shows associated licensing certificates, compliance status, UDI, and other details.

show license status

Example:

Step 4

Displays the status of all entitlements in use. show license summary

Example:

Step 5

Displays a summary of all entitlements in use.
show license platform summary

Example:

Step 6

Displays the registration status and provides a detailed information regarding the number of essential, advanced and tracking license consumption in generic or Flexible Consumption Model license model.
show license platform detail

Example:

Step 7

Displays the detailed licenses that can be consumed in particular platform in both generic and Flexible Consumption Model models. Also displays the current and the next consumption count of a particular license. Displays information of the active model,whether is it generic or Flexible Consumption Model license model.

show call-home smart-licensing statistics
Displays the statistics of communication between the Smart Licensing manager and the Cisco back-end using Smart Call Home. In case communication fails or drops, check your call home configuration for any errors.

The following example shows sample output from the show call-home smart- licensing statisticscommand:

Renew Smart Licensing Registration

In general, your registration is automatically renewed every six months. Use this option to make an on-demand manual update of your registration. Thus, instead of waiting six months for the next registration renewal cycle, you can issue this command to instantly find out the status of your license.

Before you begin
You must ensure that the following conditions are met to renew your smart license:

The device is registered.

license smart renew {auth | id}

Example

Renew your ID or authorization with Cisco smart licensing. If ID certification renewal fails, then the product instance goes to an unidentified state and starts consuming the evaluation period.

Note

• The warning message that the smart licensing evaluation period has expired is displayed in the console every hour. There is, however, no functionality impact on the device. The issue is seen on routers that do not have the Flexible Consumption licensing model enabled. To stop the repetitive messaging, register the device with the smart licensing server and enable the Flexible Consumption model. Later load a new registration token.
• Authorization periods are renewed by the Smart Licensing system every 30 days. As long as the license is in an ‘Authorized’ or ‘Out-of-compliance’ (OOC), the authorization period is renewed. Grace period starts when an authorization period expires. During the grace period or when the grace period is in the ‘Expired’ state, the system continues to try renew the authorization period. If a retry is successful, a new authorization period starts.

Smart Licensing Workflow

The Smart Licensing workflow is depicted in this flowchart.

Licenses, Product Instances, and Registration Tokens

Licenses
Depending on the product, all Cisco products licenses are any one of the following two types:

• Perpetual licenses—Licenses that do not expire.
• Term licenses—Licenses that automatically expire after a set amount of time: one year, three years, or whatever term was purchased.

All product licenses reside in a virtual account.

Product Instances
A product instance is an individual device with a unique device identifier (UDI) that is registered using a product instance registration token (or registration token). You can register any number of instances of a product with a single registration token. Each product instance can have one or more licenses residing in the same virtual account. Product instances must periodically connect to the Cisco Smart Software Manager servers during a specific renewal period. If a product instance fails to connect, it is marked as having a license shortage, but continues to use the license. If you remove the product instance, its licenses are released and made available within the virtual account.

Product Instance Registration Tokens
A product requires a registration token until you have registered the product. Registration tokens are stored in the Product Instance Registration Token Table associated with your enterprise account. Once the product is registered the registration token is no longer necessary and can be revoked and removed from the table without effect. Registration tokens can be valid from 1 to 365 days.

Virtual Accounts

Smart Licencing allows you to create multiple license pools or virtual accounts within the Smart Software Manager portal. Using the Virtual Accounts option you can aggregate licenses into discrete bundles associated with a cost center so that one section of an organization cannot use the licenses of another section of the organization. For example, if you segregate your company into different geographic regions, you can create a virtual account for each region to hold the licenses and product instances for that region.

All new licenses and product instances are placed in the default virtual account in the Smart Software Manager, unless you specify a different one during the order process. Once in the default account, you may choose to transfer them to any other account as desired, provided you have the required access permissions. Use the Smart Software Manager portal at https://software.cisco.com/ to create license pools or transfer licenses.

Compliance reporting

On a periodic basis, as described by the terms of the Smart Licensing contract, reports are automatically sent to you containing inventory and license compliance data. These reports will take one of three forms:

• Periodic Record—This record is generated on a periodic (configurable) basis with relevant inventory data saved at a given point of time. This report is saved within the Cisco cloud for archival.
• Manual Record—You can manually generate this record with relevant inventory data saved at any given point of time. This report will be saved within the Cisco cloud for archival.
• Compliance Warning Report—This report is automatically or manually generated when a license compliance event occurs. This report does not contain a full inventory data, but only any shortfalls in entitlements for a given software license.

Note
A warning message appears when a license is out-of-compliance. A log message is also saved in the syslog.

You can view these reports from the Smart Software Manager portal at https://software.cisco.com/.

References

• Networking Software - Cisco
• Cisco Software Central
• Cisco Software Central
• Cisco: Software, Network, and Cybersecurity Solutions - Cisco
• Cisco Software (SaaS) - Cisco
• Cisco Software Central

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