Introduction to Smart Licensing

Cisco Smart Licensing is a flexible licensing model that provides you with an easier, faster, and more consistent way to purchase and manage software across the Cisco portfolio and across your organization. And it’s secure – you control what users can access. With Smart Licensing you get:

• Easy Activation: Smart Licensing establishes a pool of software licenses that can be used across the entire organization—no more PAKs (Product Activation Keys).

• Unified Management: My Cisco Entitlements (MCE) provides a complete view into all of your Cisco products and services in an easy-to-use portal, so you always know what you have and what you are using.

• License Flexibility: Your software is not node-locked to your hardware, so you can easily use and transfer licenses as needed.

To use Smart Licensing, you must first set up a Smart Account on Cisco Software Central (https://software.cisco.com/software/csws/ws/platform/home).

For a more detailed overview on Cisco Licensing, go to https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/buy/licensing/licensing-guide.html.

Smart License Management

From Cisco NDFC Release 12.0.2, Smart Licensing Policy is introduced. This policy runs in the license microservice and provides the ability to manage the NDFC advanced feature licenses using CSSM. From this release, you can register smart licensing OnPrem, or offline mode.

When you register smart licensing on NDFC directly with internet access, Cisco Nexus Dashboard uses IP addresses to access the smart license instead of hostname and displays an error.

Ensure that subnets for IP addresses on https://smartreceiver.cisco.com are added to the routing IP address in Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

To add IP addresses, On Cisco Nexus Dashboard Web UI, navigate to Admin Console, Infrastructure > Cluster Configuration > Routes area. Click the edit icon and add IP addresses for Management Network Routes. Click Save to confirm.

The Smart page shows the following cards:

• Enable Smart Licensing

  Use the toggle switch to enable Smart Licensing. Once enabled, Smart License can assign in two ways, Establish Trust or Offline Mode.

• Trust Status

  Click on Establish Trust to establish trust. You can view two options Transport Gateway - OnPrem with CSLU and connecting through CSSM either directly with Cisco's licensing servers or Proxy - Proxy via intermediate HTTP or HTTPS proxy.

  On the Establish Trust for Smart License window, select the transport type to use when establishing trust with the Smart Licensing agent.

  • Choose Default to communicate directly with the Cisco Licensing Server.

  • Choose Transport Gateway - OnPrem with CSLU and enter appropriate URL.

    You don't require trust token to enable licensing. The trust is established between CSSM and the OnPrem CSLU. From NDFC and OnPrem CSLU, trust is constant, as it expected to be a local connection.

  • Choose Proxy - Proxy via intermediate HTTP or HTTPS proxy to transport using the proxy server. Enter the URL and Port details to access via the proxy server. For more information, refer to Smart Licensing using Policy to Establish Trust with CSSM.

  If using the default Transport, enter the registration token obtained from CSSM.

  Note	After Smart Licensing is registered, you must manually assign licenses to the existing switches. For all switches discovered after registration, smart licenses are automatically assigned to the switches.

• Offline Mode

  In Offline mode you can share data in alternative between NDFC instance and CSSM. Operating in an air-gap or disconnected environment, use of Offline mode allows you to export state, upload it to CSSM, and import a response back to NDFC.

  To export license data and to import the response from CSSM, follow below perform the following steps:

  1. On Trust Status click Switch to Offline mode to enable offline mode.

  2. In offline mode with one or moe licenses assigned, click Export License Data.

  3. On https://software.cisco.com/software/csws/ws/platform/home, navigate to smart licensing section, click Reports tab, and choose subsequent usage data files tab. The usage report from NDFC can be uploaded and after few minutes a response can be downloaded and imported to NDFC.

  4. Click Import License Data and upload the CSSM acknowledge file on NDFC.

• License Status

  Specifies the status of the licensing on NDFC. The value is UNCONFIGURED if the smart licensing is not enabled. After you enable the smart licensing without registering, the value is set to NO LICENSES IN USE. The value is set to IN USE or NOT IN USE after registering and assigning licenses. Click the license status to view the last action, last authorization attempt, next authorization attempt, and the authorization expiry in the License Authorization Details pop-up window.

  Click Policy Details, to view smart license policy details. You can view the default smart license policy of initial 90 days and ongoing reporting within 365 days of that report.

  Note	You can view reports after 30 days of initial registering.

Resync

When the total number of NDFC license are not same as CSSM license counts, click Resync, to refresh the license counts.

Resync causes a local audit of the NDFC licenses in the switch inventory and updates the smart license counts for reporting

CSSM allows you to convert traditional licenses to Smart Licenses. For instructions, refer to https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/se/2020/8/Collateral/brownfield-conversion-qrg.pdf.

To migrate from Smart Licensing to Smart Licensing using Policy, launch Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller. On the Web UI, choose Operations > License Management > Smart tab. Establish trust with CCSM using SLP. For instructions, refer to Smart Licensing using Policy to Establish Trust with CSSM.

The following table describes the fields that appear in the Switch Licenses section.

To upload or download license reports, go to https://software.cisco.com/, navigate to Smart Software Licensing > Reports. On Usage Data Files tab, click Upload Usage Data to upload Usage Report from NDFC. After few minutes of uploading the report, click Download in the Acknowledgment column to download a response brought back to the NDFC and imported.