Ultra Cloud Core 5G User Plane Function (UPF) supports Smart Licensing. Smart Licensing is a cloud-based approach to licensing that simplifies the purchase, deployment, and management of Cisco software assets. Entitlements are purchased through your Cisco account via Cisco Commerce Workspace (CCW) and immediately deposited into your Virtual Account for usage. This eliminates the need to install license files on every device. Products that are smart-enabled, communicate directly to Cisco to report consumption. A single location is available to customers to manage Cisco software licenses—the Cisco Smart Software Manager (CSSM). License ownership and consumption are readily available to help make better purchase decision based on consumption or business need.

See https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/buy/smart-accounts/software-licensing.html for more information about Cisco Smart Licensing.

Comparison Between Legacy Licensing and Smart Licensing

Cisco employs two types of license models - Legacy Licensing and Smart Software Licensing. Legacy Licensing consists of software activation by installing Product Activation Keys (PAK) on to the Cisco product. A Product Activation Key is a purchasable item, ordered in the same manner as other Cisco equipment and used to obtain license files for feature set on Cisco Products. Smart Software Licensing is a cloud-based licensing of the end-to-end platform leveraging few tools that authorize and deliver license reporting. Smart Software Licensing functionality incorporated into Network Functions (NFs) completes the product registration, authorization resulting in reporting services available to the end customer.

Evaluation Period

A 90-day evaluation period is granted for all licenses in use. During this period, feature licenses can be used without limitation, and up to one counting license each can be used. The evaluation period ends when the system registers successfully with the CSSM or Cisco.com. Licensed functionality is blocked when this 90-day period expires.

UPF performs license enforcement for on/off feature licenses. Each on/off feature license is tied to service licenses, which potentially use those on/off features. When an Out of Compliance (OOC) is detected for an on/off license, new calls for the corresponding services will be dropped, subject to the following conditions:

• Each on/off feature license is given a 90-day grace (evaluation) period. During this period, the system generates SNMP traps to inform of the unavailability of valid licenses. To resolve the OOC, corrective action is needed such as purchasing and registering licenses for this feature, or disabling the feature.

• If the feature is still OOC after the 90-day grace period, UPF enforces the OOC state based on a predefined policy for each license. If enforcement is required, new calls for the services corresponding to the on/off licenses are dropped.

The following CLI commands can be used to display details about the enforcement of Smart Licenses in use:

show license enforcement policy 
show license enforcement status [ allowed | blocked ] [ feature | service ] 

Before you begin, ensure you have:

• Created a Smart Licensing account on https://software.cisco.com.

• Registered your products on https://software.cisco.com using the Product Instance Registration tokens created as part of Smart Account/Virtual Account.

• Enabled a communication path between the UPF system to the CSSM server or Cisco.com.

Enable Smart Licensing

configure 
   license smart product upf 
   license smart enable 
   end 

NOTE: Before enabling Smart Licensing, Product Type must be configured to enable default licenses that are based on product type.

Enter the following command to verify the configuration:

show configuration | grep license 

Register the Device with Cisco

Using the Product Instance Registration token ID provided when you registered the products on https://software.cisco.com, register the system using the following Exec mode command:

license smart register idtoken token
 

The system now automatically reports entitlement usage count to the CSSM server and receives a compliance status. This also removes the system from "Evaluation Mode".

To show the compliance status, enter any of the following Exec mode commands:

show license status
show license summary
show license statistics
 

The registration for the system is renewed automatically every 180 days. If needed, use the following Exec mode command to renew the registration information manually:

license smart renew id
 

The license authorization for the system is renewed automatically every 30 days. If needed, use the following Exec mode command to renew the license authorization manually:

license smart renew auth 

To unregister a device, enter the following Exec mode command:

license smart deregister 

Changing Smart Transport URL

Smart Agent uses Smart Transport to communicate to Cisco CSSM server. Smart Transport uses the configured URL to identify destination URL where CSSM is reachable. This will not initiate any communication with Cisco. If needed, enter the following Configuration mode commands:

configure 
   license smart transport smart 
   license smart url https_link 

Handling Out of Compliance

If there are not enough licenses in the virtual account for a given SKU, CSSM sends an Out Of Compliance (OOC) message to the device. The system stops allowing additional sessions until the OOC state is cleared. The OOC state is cleared when the device receives an authorized response.

Enter the following Exec mode command to verify the Smart Licensing configuration:

show configuration | grep license 

The following Exec mode commands display information about Smart Licensing:

show license { all | enforcement | smart-tags | statistics | status | summary | tech-support | udi | usage }  

NOTES:

• all - Shows a superset of information that includes show status, show usage, show UDI, as well as the Smart Licensing agent version.

• enforcement { policy | status [ allowed | blocked ] [ feature | service ] } - Shows the enforcement policy applied or current enforcement status of Smart Licenses. Status information can be filtered to show only the licenses which are currently allowed or blocked, or by type (feature license or service license).

• smart-tags [ feature | service ] - Shows the features and services that are currently supported and the corresponding Smart Entitlement Tag.

• statistics [ verbose ] - Shows individual feature license status.

• status - Shows overall Smart Licensing status information.

• summary - Shows summary of Smart Licensing status.

• tech-support - Shows information useful for debugging issues with Smart Licensing.

• udi - Shows details for all Unique Device Identifiers (UDI).

• usage - Shows the usage information for all entitlements that are currently in use.