license for cucm upgrade from 7 to 8

[Paul Austin]

Hi all, I'm sure its on here somehwere but cant find anything specific but I'll be doing an upgrade from V7 to V8 and hence need new licenses - thats fine as I have the new license PAK codes BUT what happens after I have switched versions? Does the original license get migrated for a grace period or will the demo licenses be used or what?

Thanks in advance

[kylebrogers]

The demo license will kick in immediately upon upgrade.  You will need to have your 8.x licenses available as soon as 8.x comes up.  That's been my experience anyway.  So always register your PAK ahead of time and have the new licenses ready to upload into the system. 

[kylebrogers · Accepted solution]

Sorry, after re-reading your question I realized I should probably add that the 7.x license will not migrate in any way, even for a grace period.  However, if you are upgrading onto the secondary partition and boot into 8.x and have any problems you should be able to tell CUCM to boot back into 7.x and it will still have your 7.x licenses running under 7.x.  Hopefully that helps.

[Paul Austin]

Hi kylebrogers, Thanks for the VERY swift reply. will the license mac not change? It's all on a MCS server so am I right in thinking that the license mac will change or is that only valid for VMWare installs as I have been infomed?

[kylebrogers]

Sorry, I was thinking of a straight-forward on-box upgrade.  When you say upgrade, are you doing a straight upgrade, or are you building an 8.x box in parallel and then importing a 7.x backup into it? 

If you're doing a fresh install of 8.x, you should see your licensed MAC during the install and be able to register your PAKs at that point while the install continues. 

If you're doing a straight upgrade (through the web GUI), I don't see a reason that the licensed MAC should change.  When you register your 8.x PAKs you will be asked for that MAC again. 

I hate to say it, but you might wait for someone with more experience on MCS upgrades to answer, but definitely respond with the process you're going through to upgrade as it will most likely make a difference in their answer. 

[Rob Huffman · Accepted solution]

Hi Paul,

I'll just add a note to the good tips from Kyle (+5 "K")

The "license mac" is only related to virtual (vm builds) as you nicely noted so you won't need to worry about

that if you are going MCS 7.x to MCS 8.x. your new 8.x licenses on the MCS are only tied to the

mac of the Publisher as in previous versions.

When you upgrade, the licenses for Nodes etc. will migrate but the Call Manager Service

will not stay running until you load your new 8.x Software Feature License

using the License file upload via System > Licensing > License File Upload. Then you'll be good to go.

Cheers and best of luck with the migration!

Rob

"Everything is broken" - Bob Dylan