The Cisco Catalyst 8000V is licensed based on throughput, feature-set, and the licensing term. This product supports Cisco Smart Licensing Usage Policy as well as Cisco DNA Licensing. Based on whether you want to go for purchased licenses that go with the Cisco Catalyst 8000V instance, or a subscription-based license, choose one of the following options:

Bring-Your-Own-Licensing

You also have an option to purchase and use licenses with Cisco Catalyst 8000V as a Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL) instance or as a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) instance.

To use a Cisco Catalyst 8000V - BYOL license, see Cisco Smart Licensing Usage Policy to know to how install and configure your license.

If you have upgraded to Cisco Catalyst 8000V from a Cisco CSR 1000V or a Cisco ISRV, you must use Smart Licensing Using Policy (SLP). Traditional licenses do not work after the upgrade.

Note

Starting from Cisco IOS XE 17.4.1, with the introduction of Smart Licensing Using Policy, even if you configure a hostname for a product instance or device, only the Unique Device Identifier (UDI) is displayed. This change in the display can be observed in all licensing utilities and user interfaces where the hostname was displayed in earlier releases. It does not affect any licensing functionality. There is no workaround for this limitation. The licensing utilities and user interfaces that are affected by this limitation include only the following: Cisco Smart Software Manager (CSSM), Cisco Smart License Utility (CSLU), and Smart Software Manager On-Prem (SSM On-Prem).

Note	For demo or evaluation licenses, contact your Cisco Account Team if you have a direct purchase agreement with Cisco, or your Cisco Partner or Reseller.

The following are the new Cisco Catalyst 8000V software features for Cisco IOS XE Bengaluru 17.4.1 release:

Note

Starting from Cisco IOS XE 17.4.1, with the introduction of Smart Licensing Using Policy, even if you configure a hostname for a product instance or device, only the Unique Device Identifier (UDI) is displayed. This change in the display can be observed in all licensing utilities and user interfaces where the hostname was displayed in earlier releases. It does not affect any licensing functionality. There is no workaround for this limitation. The licensing utilities and user interfaces that are affected by this limitation include only the following: Cisco Smart Software Manager (CSSM), Cisco Smart License Utility (CSLU), and Smart Software Manager On-Prem (SSM On-Prem).

• Smart Licensing Using Policy: An enhanced version of Smart Licensing with the overall objective of providing a licensing solution that does not interrupt the operations of your network but also enables a compliance relationship to account for the hardware and software licenses you purchase and use. With this licensing model, you do not have to complete any licensing-specific operations such as registering or generating keys before you start using the software and the licenses that are tied to it. License usage is recorded on your device with timestamps and the required workflows can be completed at a later date. Multiple options are available for license usage reporting which depends on the topology you implement. You can use the Cisco Smart Licensing Utility (CSLU) Windows application or report usage information directly to CSSM. A provision for offline reporting for air-gapped networks where you download usage information and upload to CSSM is also available. Starting with this release, Smart Licensing Using Policy is automatically enabled on the device. This is also the case when you upgrade to the current version of the release. By default, your Smart Account and Virtual Account in CSSM are enabled for Smart Licensing Using Policy.

  For a more detailed overview on Cisco Licensing, go to https://cisco.com/go/licensingguide.

• Smart Software Manager On-Prem (SSM On-Prem) Support for Smart Licensing Using Policy: SSM On-Prem is an asset manager, which works in conjunction with CSSM. It enables you to administer products and licenses on your premises instead of having to directly connect to CSSM.

  Here, a product instance is connected to SSM On-Prem, and SSM On-Prem becomes the single point of interface with CSSM. The product instance can be configured to push the required information to SSM On-Prem. Alternatively, SSM On-Prem can be set-up to pull the required information from a product instance at a configurable frequency. After usage information is available in SSM On-Prem, you must synchronize the same with CSSM, to ensure that the product instance count, license count and license usage information is the same on both, CSSM and SSM On‐Prem. Offline and online options are available for synchronization between CSSM and SSM On‐Prem.

  Minimum Required SSM On-Prem Version: Version 8, Release 202102

  Minimum Required Cisco IOS XE Version: Cisco IOS XE Amsterdam 17.4.1

• Enhancements to Radio Aware Routing: Starting from the Cisco IOS XE 17.4.1 release, the following enhancement is available when you use the Radio-Aware-Routing feature with a Cisco Catalyst 8000V virtual router. Earlier, the RAR functionality used a credit-based mechanism to send data packets where each radio sent the data packets based on the credits. Now, a priority-based mechanism is first used to send the data packets. With this enhancement to the RAR functionality, the radio sends the data packets that are high priority first. This enhancement is auto-enabled, and no configuration changes are required.

• BGP Large Community: The BGP large communities support a routing policy to control the distribution of routing information. The BGP large communities attribute provides the capability of tagging routes and modifying BGP routing policy on the device. BGP large communities can be appended or removed selectively on the large community attribute as the route travels from device to device.

• NBAR Support on the EVC Service Instance: To classify the data packets, enable NBAR FIA-trace data for NBAR on the EFP interface. Quality of service (QoS) takes action on the output interface based on the NBAR traffic classification result.

• BGP-EVPNoMPLS Unknown Unicast Flooding Suppression: The unknown unicast flooding suppression feature provides the capability to block the unknown unicast traffic that are forwarded to the device. When the unknown unicast flooding suppression status is set to ON, the Control Plane Policing drops the packet with unicast destination MAC address.

• IP-SLA-HTTPS Support: This feature has enhanced capabilities of IP SLA device tracking with HTTPS probes and helps to verify reachability in the network.

  Configuring Stateless Static NAT: Static Network Address Translation (NAT) allows the user to configure one-to-one translations of the inside local addresses to the outside global addresses. A new keyword stateless is introduced for Cisco IOS XE static NAT configuration and it applies only to static NAT command. When the static mapping is set to stateless, no sessions will be created for that traffic flow.

• Configure Performance Measurement - This feature enables hardware timestamping. The Performance Measurement (PM) for link delay uses the light version of Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol (TWAMP) over IP and UDP.

• EPC support on LTE interface and FlexVPN interface: Embedded Packet Capture (EPC) is an onboard packet capture facility that allows network administrators to capture packets flowing to, through, and from a device. This feature facilitates troubleshooting by gathering information about packet format.

• Configuring the Same Global Address for Static NAT and PAT: You can now configure the same global address within the static NAT and static PAT. This configuration is supported only on outside static NAT.

• The Web UI lets you configure the Smart Licensing on Cisco Catalyst 8000V. Further, you can monitor the Cellular Gateway. To learn more, refer to the WebUI Online Help.

• CUBE: Hunt Stop for Server Groups: Server groups allow you to create simpler configurations by specifying a list of destination SIP servers for a single dial peer. When a call matches a dial peer that is configured with a server group, the destination is selected from the list of candidates based on a configured policy. If it is not possible to complete that call, the next candidate is selected. Alternatively, you can also choose to stop hunting through the group if a specified response code is received. If the call cannot be placed to any of the servers in the group, or hunting is stopped, call processing continues to the next preferred dial-peer.

• CUBE: VoIP Trace Serviceability Framework: VoIP Trace is a Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) serviceability framework, which provides a binary trace facility for persistently monitoring and troubleshooting SIP call issues. The VoIP Trace framework records both successful and failed calls. All call trace data is stored in system memory. In addition, data for calls with IEC errors is written to the logging buffer.

• Unified SRST: Smart License Using Policy: Smart Licensing using Policy reports license usage periodically based on an account policy, rather than requesting licenses based on past usage as in previous releases. Evaluation mode and license reservation are not supported. License usage is reported to Smart Agent three minutes after the last configuration change. Now all the devices within a network follow the uniform approach of reporting their license usage to Smart Agent. The Smart Agent in turn creates a Resource Utilization Monitoring (RUM) report and dispatches to CSSM based on the Smart Agent reporting policy. See also https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cusrst/admin/sccp_sip_srst/configuration/guide/SCCP_and_SIP_SRST_Admin_Guide/enhanced_srst.html.

  For a more detailed overview on Cisco Licensing, go to https://cisco.com/go/licensingguide.

• Unified CME: Smart License Using Policy: Smart Licensing using Policy reports license usage periodically based on an account policy, rather than requesting licenses based on past usage as in previous releases.Evaluation mode and license reservation are not supported. License usage is reported to Smart Agent three minutes after the last configuration change. Now all the devices within a network follow the uniform approach of reporting their license usage to Smart Agent. The Smart Agent in turn creates a Resource Utilization Monitoring (RUM) report and dispatches to CSSM based on the Smart Agent reporting policy.

  For a more detailed overview on Cisco Licensing, go to https://cisco.com/go/licensingguide.

• CUBE: Smart License Using Policy: Smart Licensing using Policy reports license usage periodically based on an account policy, rather than requesting licenses based on past usage as in previous releases. Evaluation mode and license reservation are not supported. Frequent license requests used to go out from a device to CSSM in earlier versions. In the changed scenario, minimum reporting license usage is 8 hours. Now all the devices within a network follow the uniform approach of reporting their license usage to Smart Agent. The Smart Agent in turn creates a Resource Utilization Monitoring (RUM) report and dispatches to CSSM based on the Smart Agent reporting policy.

  For a more detailed overview on Cisco Licensing, go to https://cisco.com/go/licensingguide.

• CUBE: Clear Hung RTP Ports: When establishing a call, CUBE allocates several RTP ports that are based on the media that are negotiated for the session. Some ports remain assigned even after the call ends. In the current behavior, show voip rtp stats command displays only the ports allocated from the global table, even if the ports are allocated from all the three tables (Global port, media IP address-based, and media VRF-based). Now this command is enhanced to display the ports allocated from all the three tables. The command also displays the hung ports and allows you to release those ports. Releasing the hung ports increases the efficiency of the routers as more ports are available to receive calls.