Smart Licensing is a cloud-based approach to licensing. Smart Licensing simplifies the licensing experience across the enterprise making it easier to purchase, deploy, track, and renew Cisco Software. It provides visibility into license ownership and consumption through a single, simple user interface. The solution allows you to easily track the status of your license and software usage trends.

Smart Licensing helps you simplify three core functions:

• Purchasing: The software that you have installed in your network can be registered, without Product Activation Keys (PAKs).

• 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.

• 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 purchasing decisions, based on your consumption.

Smart Licensing Features

• Your device initiates a call home and requests the licenses it needs.

• Pooled licences - Licences are company account-specific, and can be used with any compatible device in your company. You can activate or deactivate different types of licenses on the device without actually installing a license file on the device.

• Licenses are stored securely on Cisco servers.

• Licenses can be moved between product instances without license transfer. This greatly simplifies the reassignment of a software license as part of the Return Material Authorization (RMA) process.

• It provides a complete view of all the Smart Software Licenses used in the network using a consolidated usage report of software licenses and devices in one easy-to-use portal.

Cisco Smart Account

Cisco Smart Account is an account where all products enabled for Smart Licensing are deposited. Cisco Smart Account allows you to manage and activate your licenses to devices, monitor license use, and track Cisco license purchases. Through transparent access, you have a real-time view into your Smart Licensing products. IT administrators can manage licenses and account users within your organization's Smart Account through the Smart Software Manager.

When creating a Smart Account, you must have the authority to represent the requesting organization. After you submit the request, it goes through a brief approval process. Access http://software.cisco.com to learn about, set up, or manage Smart Accounts.

Cisco Smart Software Manager Overview

Cisco Smart Software Manager enables you to manage all your Cisco Smart software licenses from one centralized website. With Cisco Smart Software Manager, you organize and view your licenses in groups called virtual accounts (collections of licenses and product instances). Use the Cisco Smart Software Manager to do the following tasks:

• Create, manage, or view virtual accounts.

• Create and manage Product Instance Registration Tokens.

• Transfer licenses between virtual accounts or view licenses.

• Transfer, remove, or view product instances.

• Run reports against your virtual accounts.

• Modify your email notification settings.

• View overall account information.

Virtual Accounts

A Virtual Account exists as a sub-account tithing the Smart Account. Virtual Accounts are a customer-defined structure based on organizational layout, business function, geography, or any defined hierarchy. They are created and maintained by the Smart Account administrator. Smart Licencing allows you to create multiple license pools or virtual accounts within the Smart Software Manager portal. Using the Virtual Accounts option that you can aggregate licenses into discrete bundles that are 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. After you access the default account, you may choose to transfer them to any other account, provided you have the required access permissions.

Use the Smart Software Manager portal to create license pools or transfer licenses.

Product Instance Registration Tokens

A product requires a registration token until you have registered the product. On successful registration, the device receives an identity certificate. This certificate is saved and automatically used for all future communications with Cisco. Registration tokens are stored in the Product Instance Registration Token Table that is associated with your enterprise account. Registration tokens can be valid 1–365 days.

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 you remove the product instance, its licenses are released and made available within the virtual account.

Smart Licensing Work Flow

The following figure depicts a working model of smart licensing that involves a three-step procedure.

1. Setting up Smart Licensing: You can place the order for Smart Licensing, to manage licenses on the Cisco.com portal. You agree to the terms and conditions governing the use and access of Smart Licensing in the Smart Software Manager portal.

2. Enabling and Use Smart Licensing: Smart Licensing is enabled by default. You can use either of the following options to communicate:

   • Smart Call Home: The Smart Call Home feature is automatically configured when Smart Licensing is enabled. 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 effectively pursue service and support contract renewals. For more information on Smart Call Home feature, see http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/smart_call_home/SCH_Deployment_Guide.pdf.

   • Smart Software Manager Satellite : is a component of Cisco Smart Licensing and works with Cisco Smart Software Manager (SSM). It helps customers intelligently manage product licenses, providing near real-time visibility and reporting of the Cisco licenses they purchase and consume.

     For customers who do not want to manage their installed base using a direct Internet connection, the Smart Software Manager satellite is installed on the customer premises and provides a subset of Cisco SSM functionality. After you download the satellite application, deploy it, and register it to Cisco SSM, you can perform the following functions locally:

     • Activate or register a license

     • Get visibility to your company's licenses

     • Transfer licenses between company entities

     Periodically, the satellite must synchronize with Cisco SSM to reflect the latest license entitlements.

     For more information about the Smart Software Manager satellite, see http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/buy/smart-accounts/software-manager-satellite.html.

3. Manage and Report Licenses: You can manage and view reports about your overall software usage in the Smart Software Manager portal. Compliance reporting describes the types of Smart Licensing reports.

• Licenses are not locked to perform configurations even if the license limit exceeds the paid license limit. You are notified with out-of-compliance notification to buy additional licenses when the license limit exceeds the paid license limit. This saves time with the ability to transfer licenses across the organization.

• Licenses can be pooled across the entire organization, enabling them to be reused across organizational boundaries.

• Provides software asset management information so that you can plan and track the licenses.

Cisco NCS 1002 has two PIDs:

• Fully licensed PID (NCS1002-K9)—This is a high cost PID. By using the fully licensed PID, you can configure and use the software without any explicit licensing.
• Partially licensed PID (NCS1002-LIC-K9)—This is a low cost PID and you have to additionally buy licenses to configure the software.

Software entitlement is a system that consists of a license manager on Cisco NCS 1002 that manages licenses for various software and hardware features. The license manager parses and authenticates a license before accepting it.

Core features are available for use without any license. The following features are available on Cisco NCS 1002 only using licenses.

The following table lists the features and its corresponding entitlements that can be enabled on Cisco NCS 1002 using licenses:

Note	You can view these software entitlements and their usage details in the Cisco Smart Software Manager portal.

There is one-to-one mapping mapping between the software entitlement and the smart license. For example, S-NCS1K-LIC-200G= license requested by the customer maps to the L_NCS1K_200G_LIC entitlement stored in the software.

After enabling Smart Licensing, you can use the show commands to verify the default Smart Licensing configuration. If any issue is detected, take corrective action before making further configurations.

• show license all
• show license status
• show license summary
• show license tech
• show license udi
• show license usage
• show license platform detail
• show tech-support smartlic
• show tech-support call-home

The following table defines the available license authorization status in Cisco NCS1002:

Example 1:

The following example shows the sample output of show license all command.

RP/0/RP0/CPU0:ios#show license all
Fri Jan  6 01:33:24.230 UTC
Smart Licensing Status
======================
Smart Licensing is ENABLED
Registration:  
	Status: REGISTERED  
	Smart Account: BU Production Test  
	Virtual Account: NCS1000  Initial 
	Registration: SUCCEEDED on Thu Jan 05 2017 15:04:18 UTC 
	Last Renewal Attempt: None  
	Next Renewal Attempt: Tue Jul 04 2017 15:04:18 UTC  
	Registration Expires: Fri Jan 05 2018 09:25:50 UTC
License Authorization:  
	Status: AUTHORIZED on Thu Jan 05 2017 15:17:04 UTC  
	Last Communication Attempt: SUCCEEDED on Thu Jan 05 2017 15:17:04 UTC  
	Next Communication Attempt: Sat Feb 04 2017 15:17:04 UTC  
	Communication Deadline: Fri Jan 05 2018 09:25:50 UTC
License Usage
==============
No licenses in use
Product Information
===================
UDI: SN:CAT1111B0KR,UUID:default-sdr
Agent Version=============Smart Agent for Licensing: 2.2.0_rel/17RP/0/RP0/CPU0:ios#

Example 2:

The following example shows the sample output of show license platform detail command. The output displays telemetry entry only for R6.2.1 and R6.2.2.

RP/0/RP0/CPU0:ios#show license platform detail
Fri Jan 20 12:09:30.729 UTC
Current state:    REGISTERED
Collection: LAST: Fri Jan 20 12:03:13 2017
            NEXT: Fri Jan 20 13:03:13 2017
Reporting:  LAST: Fri Jan 20 12:03:13 2017
            NEXT: Sat Jan 21 12:03:13 2017
Parameters: Collection interval:          60 minute(s)
            Reporting  interval:        1440 minute(s)
            Throughput gauge:        1000000 Kbps
=================================================
Feature/Area 'sys_features'
   Name:  sys_features
   DLL:   libplat_sl_plugin_sys_features.so
   Flags: CONFIG
   # CLI: 1
   Entitlements (total 1):
   [ 0] Name:  NCS1K Smart License - streaming telemetry
        Token: regid.2017-01.com.cisco.L-NCS1K-ST-LIC-,1.0_6222b080-6651-4611-a725-fc84b647d614
        Count: Last reported:    1
               Next report:      0
=================================================
Feature/Area 'system'
   Name:  System
   DLL:   libplat_sl_plugin_system.so
   Flags: CONFIG
   # CLI: 3
   Entitlements (total 3):
   [ 0] Name:  NCS1K Smart License - one slice with 200G DWDM
        Token: regid.2017-01.com.cisco.L-NCS1K-200G-LIC,1.0_b03ac261-7397-4a66-b1e2-affa324ac518
        Count: Last reported:    0
               Next report:      0
   [ 1] Name:  NCS1K Smart License - one slice with 200G/250G DWDM
        Token: regid.2017-01.com.cisco.L-NCS1K-250G-LIC,1.0_c0520a76-f3f9-4773-b841-60fadfa70e4e
        Count: Last reported:    0
               Next report:      0
   [ 2] Name:  NCS1K Smart License - one slice with encryption
        Token: regid.2017-01.com.cisco.L-NCS1K-ENCR-LIC-,1.0_18fbcf09-68a5-4853-9534-cdbcad8dc918
        Count: Last reported:    0
               Next report:      0

Example 3:

The following example shows the sample output of show license summary command.

RP/0/RP0/CPU0:ios#show license summary
Thu Feb  2 23:10:46.723 UTC
Smart Licensing is ENABLED
Registration:
  Status: REGISTERED
  Smart Account: BU Production Test
  Virtual Account: NCS1000
  Last Renewal Attempt: None
  Next Renewal Attempt: Tue Aug 01 2017 23:09:00 UTC
License Authorization:
  Status: AUTHORIZED on Thu Feb 02 2017 23:09:12 UTC
  Last Communication Attempt: SUCCEEDED
  Next Communication Attempt: Thu Feb 02 2017 23:10:53 UTC
License Usage:
  License             Entitlement tag          Count  Status
  ---------------------------------------------------------------
                      (L-NCS1K-200G-LIC)          2   PENDING
                      (L-NCS1K-250G-LIC)          1   PENDING
                      (L-NCS1K-ENCR-LIC-)         1   PENDING

Example 4:

The following example shows the sample output of show license usage command.

RP/0/RP0/CPU0:ios#show license usage
Fri Feb  3 21:08:24.097 UTC
License Authorization:
  Status: No Licenses in Use
RP/0/RP0/CPU0:ios#
RP/0/RP0/CPU0:ios#show license trace ?
  all       Show tracing for both Smart Licensing and client(cisco-support)
  client    Show tracing for the agent client code(cisco-support)
  smartlic  Show tracing for the Smart Licensing Code(cisco-support)