Cisco Nexus 9000 PLR License

Cisco Nexus 9000 PLR License Features

Cisco Nexus 9000 series switches can operate in two different modes, NX-OS and ACI mode. In each mode Cisco smart licensing is supported and customers can register all product instances on the Cisco smart software manager or CSSM. Although, for the enterprises which have certain restriction for inbound or outbound traffic on their network, Cisco offers PLR license solution to allow these enterprises to register their devices permanently and without any direct or proxy-based connection to the CSSM.

 Nexus 9000 NX-OS PLR License Features

All Cisco Nexus 9000 switches running on NX-OS mode (Cisco Nexus 9200/9300/9500) support Cisco Permanent License Reservation on this mode. This license will activate the following features on these devices permanently (No need for periodic renewal):

• Fabric management features (DCNM LAN and PTP)
• Advanced Fabric services features (iCAM, ITD, IP fabric for media non-blocking multicast, and smart channel, Pervasive Load Balancing and Tenant Routed Multicast)
• Advanced Routing and switching features (BGP, EIGRP, GRE, IS-IS, MSDP, OSPF, PBR, PIM, SSM, VRF, VXLAN BGP EVPN
• DCI overlay features (Inter AS option B, Segment routing SR-MPLS, Layer 3 EVPN over segment routing SRv6, MPLS Layer 3 VPN, and VXLAN EVPN Multi-Site, Enhanced PBR (EPBR))
• Telemetry features (NetFlow, FT, FTE, SSX)
• RTP Flow Monitoring (Media Flow Analytics), PTP Monitoring, Multicast NAT

Please note that mentioned Feature support varies by platform and release. See the Nexus Switch Platform Support Matrix to determine which features are supported for your platform.

 Cisco Nexus 9K DCN (ACI + NX-OS) PLR License Features

With Cisco Data Center Networking (DCN) PLR license customers could initially manage their Nexus 9000 infrastructure with the NX-OS management capabilities, and then transition to ACI when ready, without having to purchase any new licenses. The following features would be activated using this license:

• Routed fabric capability: LAN Enterprise (Layer 3 routing) features license (Cisco NX-OS Software), Data Center Networking subscriptions including multi-pod capability.
• Fabric management: Data Center Network Manager LAN (NX-OS), Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) capabilities (Cisco ACI).
• Cisco Nexus Dashboard: A powerful single pane of glass to access multiple management applications.
• Day 2 Operations Suite

After all, note that by applying Cisco ACI PLR license on APIC controllers, all the Nexus 9000 PLR deployed in the ACI fabric would be activated.