What model of Fabric Interconnect do you have ? how many ports are used on this FI ? The hardware itself has bundled a number of port licenses. If you are above this limit, then a grace period of 120 days starts; however, even after expiration of the grace period, nothing happens; the only downside: your logfile will be filled with error messages.
Licenses
Each Cisco UCS fabric interconnect comes with several port licenses that are factory installed and shipped with the hardware. Fabric interconnects can be purchased fully licensed or partially licensed. Additional licenses can also be purchased after delivery.
At a minimum, each fabric interconnect ships with the following counted licenses pre-installed:
- Cisco UCS 6120XP fabric interconnect—pre-installed licenses for the first eight Ethernet ports enabled in Cisco UCS Manager and any Fibre Channel ports on expansion modules
- Cisco UCS 6140XP fabric interconnect—pre-installed licenses for the first sixteen Ethernet ports enabled in Cisco UCS Manager and any Fibre Channel ports on expansion modules
- Cisco UCS 6248 fabric interconnect—pre-installed licenses for the first twelve unified ports enabled in Cisco UCS Manager. Expansion modules come with eight licenses that can be used on the expansion module or the base module.
- Cisco UCS 6296 fabric interconnect—pre-installed licenses for the first eighteen unified ports enabled in Cisco UCS Manager. Expansion modules come with eight licenses that can be used on the expansion module or the base module.
 Note | The eight default licenses that come with a 6200 series fabric interconnect expansion module can be used to enable ports on the base module, but will travel with the expansion module if it is removed. Upon removal of an expansion module, any default expansion module licenses being used by the base module are removed from the ports on the base module, resulting in unlicensed ports. |
Port licenses are not bound to physical ports. When you disable a licensed port, that license is then retained for use with the next enabled port. If you want to use additional fixed ports, you must purchase and install licenses for those ports.
Licenses are not portable across product generations. Licenses purchased for 6100 series fabric interconnects cannot be used to enable ports on 6200 series fabric interconnects or vice-versa.
Grace Period
If you attempt to use a port that does not have an installed license, Cisco UCS initiates a 120 day grace period. The grace period is measured from the first use of the port without a license and is paused when a valid license file is installed. The amount of time used in the grace period is retained by the system.
Note | Each physical port has its own grace period. Initiating the grace period on a single port does not initiate the grace period for all ports. |
