Prime Infrastructure Licensing
You purchase licenses to access the Prime Infrastructure features required to manage your network. Each license also controls the number of devices you can manage using those features. The maximum number of license files that can be added to Prime Infrastructure is 25.
The Administration > Licenses and Software Updates > Licenses page allows you to manage traditional Cisco Prime Infrastructure, wireless LAN controllers, and Mobility Services Engine (MSE) licenses.
Although Prime Infrastructure and MSE licenses can be fully managed from the Administration > Licenses and Software Updates > Licenses page, you can only view Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers (WLC). You must use Cisco WLC or Cisco License Manager (CLM) to manage Cisco WLC licenses.
The Administration > Licenses and Software Updates > Smart Software Licensing page allows you to manage smart licenses.
You need a base license and the corresponding feature licenses (such as Assurance licenses) to get full access to the respective Prime Infrastructure features to manage a set number of devices.
If you have installed Prime Infrastructure for the first time you may access the lifecycle and assurance features using the built-in evaluation license that is available by default. The default evaluation license is valid for 60 days for 100 devices. You can send a request to ask-prime-infrastructure@cisco.com if:
- You need to extend the evaluation period
- You need to increase the device count
- You already have a particular feature license and need to evaluate the other feature licenses
You will need to order a base license and then purchase the corresponding feature license before the evaluation license expires. The license that you purchase must be sufficient to:
- Enable access to all the Prime Infrastructure features you want to use to manage your network.
- Include all the devices in your network that you want to manage using Prime Infrastructure.
To ensure you have the licenses to achieve these goals, do the following:
- Familiarize yourself with the types of license packages available to you, and their requirements.
- View the existing licenses. See for help on ordering and downloading licenses.
- Calculate the number of licenses you will need, based both on the package of features you want and the number of devices you need to manage.
- Add new licenses.
- Delete existing licenses.
Note |
As Prime Infrastructure no longer supports the node-locked licensing approach, the UDI information required to generate licenses are limited to a standard syntax as shown below:
You must provide the subtleties in the mentioned format to generate new licenses. |
For more information, see Cisco Prime Infrastructure Ordering and Licensing Guide.
Purchase Prime Infrastructure Licenses
Prime Infrastructure licenses control the features you can use and the number of devices you can manage using those features. For more information about Prime Infrastructure license types and how to order them, see the Cisco Prime Infrastructure Ordering and Licensing Guide for the version of Prime Infrastructure that you want to use.
You can ignore warning messages like “Base license is missing” or “Multiple base licenses present, use only one” displayed in the Administration > Licenses and Software Updates > Licenses > Files > License Files area.
Verify License Details
Before you order new licenses, you might want to get details about your existing licenses. For example, number of devices managed by your system.
To verify license details, choose
.Add Licenses
You need to add new licenses when:
- You have purchased a new Prime Infrastructure license.
- You are already using Prime Infrastructure and have bought additional licenses.
Procedure
Step 1 |
Choose . |
Step 2 |
In the Summary folder, click Files, then click License Files. |
Step 3 |
Click Add. |
Step 4 |
Browse to the location of the license file, then click OK. |
Delete Licenses
When you delete licenses from Prime Infrastructure, all licensing information is removed from the server. Make a copy of your original license file in case you want to add it again later. There are several reasons you might want to delete licenses:
- You installed temporary licenses and want to delete them before applying your permanent licenses.
- You want to move your licenses to a different server. You must first delete the licenses from the original server, then send an email to licensing@cisco.com requesting a re-host for your licenses. You can then apply the re-hosted licenses to the new server.
Procedure
Step 1 |
Choose Administration > Licenses and Software Updates > Licenses. |
Step 2 |
Click Files > License Files. |
Step 3 |
Select the license file you want to delete, then click Delete. |
Troubleshoot Licenses
To troubleshoot licenses, you will need to get details about the licenses that are installed on your system. to:
- Get a quick list of the licenses you have: Click Help > About Prime Infrastructure.
- Get license details: Choose Administration > Licenses and Software Updates > Licenses.
When troubleshooting licenses, it is important to remember that Prime Infrastructure has six types of licenses:
- Base: Required for every Prime Infrastructure installation. The requirement stems primarily from the need to do accurate royalty accounting by knowing how many Prime Infrastructure instances have been purchased. A Base license is required for each instance of Prime Infrastructure, and is a prerequisite for all other license types.
- Lifecycle: Regulates the total number of devices under Prime Infrastructure management. Lifecycle license is consumed only for admin VDC in Prime Infrastructure. The child VDC does not consume any license. It is either auto-added by admin or added separately.
- Assurance: Regulates the total number of NetFlow devices under Prime Infrastructure management.
- Collector: Regulates the total number of NetFlow data flows per second that Prime Infrastructure can process.
Lifecycle and Assurance licenses are supplied in either evaluation or permanent form (there is no explicit evaluation version of the Base or Collector licenses):
- Evaluation: These licenses permit or extend access to Prime Infrastructure for a pre-set period. You can apply only one evaluation license of each type (that is, only one Lifecycle evaluation license, one Assurance evaluation license, and so on). You cannot apply an evaluation license over a permanent form of the same license.
- Permanent License: These permit access to Prime Infrastructure features as specified and are not time-limited. Permanent licenses can be applied over evaluation licenses, and can also be applied incrementally (that is, you can have multiple permanent Assurance licenses, and so on).
Prime Infrastructure also performs the following basic license checks:
- A Lifecycle license is a required prerequisite for Assurance licenses.
- An Assurance license is a required prerequisite for Collector licenses.
Also note that:
- From Release 3.0 Prime Infrastructure enables the user to set threshold limit for generating an alarm for all licenses. To set threshold limit for licenses, see “Configuring Notifications” in Related Topics.
- Prime Infrastructure hides Assurance-related features, menu options and links until an Assurance license is applied. Even if you have purchased an Assurance license, these features remain hidden until you apply it.
- Whenever you apply an Assurance license, you automatically apply a Collector license permitting an instance of Prime Infrastructure to process up to 20,000 NetFlow data flows per second. Collector licenses permitting 80,000 flows per second can be applied only with the Professional or equivalent configurations, due to the hard disk requirements imposed by this data rate.
- You can add Lifecycle and Assurance permanent licenses incrementally. However, you can add only one Collector 80K license, and then only with the Professional or equivalent configuration.
The following table provides some scenarios and tips for troubleshooting.
Scenario |
Possible Cause |
Resolution |
---|---|---|
Prime Infrastructure reports a Licensing error. |
The license file may be corrupted and unusable. This can occur anyone attempts to modify the license file. |
|
Unable to add new licenses. |
Some types of license must be added in the correct order. The Base license is a prerequisite for adding Lifecycle licenses. A Lifecycle license is a prerequisite for adding an Assurance license. An Assurance license is a prerequisite for adding a Collector license (a Collector license is added automatically with the Assurance license). |
|
The state of the devices has changed to unmanaged. |
The device limit must be less than or equal to lifecycle license limit. The state of the inventoried devices will change to unmanaged if you add or delete devices. |
To verify that the status of the inventoried devices has changed to “managed” after synchronization:
|