Cisco Smart License Types

Cisco Smart License Types, Product Instances, and Registration Tokens

All Cisco products need Smart Licenses to be registered and these licensing models which reside in a virtual account, have two types which differ on the product:

• Perpetual licenses—Licenses that are permanent and do not expire.
• Term licenses—Licenses that automatically expire after a set amount of time: one year, three years, or whatever term was purchased.

In addition, there are demo licenses which expire after at most 60 days. Demo licenses are not intended for production use. To know more about Cisco license prices please check price quotes.

Product Instances of smart license

A product instance is a single device with a unique device identifier (UDI) which is registered using a product instance registration token (or registration token). You are able to register any number of instances of a product with a unique registration token. Each product instance can use one or more licenses residing in the same virtual account.

Product instances must periodically connect to the Cisco Smart Software Manager servers during an exact renewal period. If a product instance fails to connect, it is marked as having a license shortage, but continues to use the license. A removed product instance licenses are released and made available within the virtual account.

Product Instance Registration Tokens

Registration tokens are stored in the Product Instance Registration Token Table associated with an enterprise account. When the product is registered, the registration token is no longer necessary so can be revoked and removed from the table without effect. Registration tokens could be valid from 1 to 365 days.

Cisco offers both permanent and short-term license activation. Also, there are two types of PLR Licenses and SLR Licenses for enabling different features available on the devices for supporting customer environments.

 Specific License Reservation (SLR)

SLR License allows you to install a node-locked license file (SLR authorization code) on a product instance. This license file enables individual (specific) licenses (entitlement tags).

Permanent License Reservation (PLR)

Cisco PLR License lets you install an authorization code that enables all licensed features on the product.

Both SLR and PLR require pre-approval at the Smart Account level.

On Cisco Software Service Management follow below steps to activate these licenses:

Step 1

Navigate Tools > Licenses > All Licenses.

Step 2

Select the devices for that you want to apply SLR or PLR, and select Actions > Manage License Reservation > Enable License Reservation.

Step 3

Click Specific License Reservation (SLR) or Permanent License Reservation (PLR) and Select Continue to get the request codes for the selected devices.

Step 4

After the request codes are generated for the selected devices, click Continue.

Step 5

Select a virtual account from where you want desire to reserve licenses and click Continue to generate the authorization codes for the selected devices.

Step 6

After the authorization codes are generated, do one of the following:

• To apply SLR immediately, choose the devices and click Continue.
• To apply SLR at a later time, click Apply Later.

Step 7

Click Confirm to apply SLR/PLR to the selected device.

Now check the updated status of the devices under Reservation Status on the All-Licenses page.