DNA Advantage to Essentials

[zokarsukki]

Hello all,

I am trying to move from Advantage liscences to essentials on a 9800 wlc, but from what I have found the WLC needs to be set to essentials, and then the Advantage liscences cannot be used. Is there any way around this? Do I have to contact my cisco rep to possibly convert the Advantage licenses to essentials, as I have already paid for them (being hopeful, well aware it is cisco we are talking about here). Any advice or tips would be appreciated.

[Torbjørn]

What are you trying to achieve? The advantage license is a higher licensing level than essentials, so all functionality of the essentials licensing is included in your advantage license. You should be able to change license level to dna essentials with the following command:

license air level network-essentials addon air-dna-essentials

This will cause your WLC to consume essentials licenses instead of advantage licenses in your smart account. If you have mistakenly bought the wrong licenses for a few access-points you will need to contact Cisco to have this resolved.

You can read more about configuring license levels in the following config guide: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/config-guide/b_wl_16_10_cg/smart-licensing.html#task_k2c_nps_xfb

[balaji.bandi]

For the WLC to work as expected and more advanced features you need advantage License, Essential Licensee is Perpetual

here is the FAQ and how you can setup the License required : ( also compare the features of WLC).

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/catalyst-9800-series-wireless-controllers/impl-catalyst-9800-wrls-lan-ctrlr-licens-faq.html