Issue with license activation during reboot

[Antoine Chemin]

Hello,

in a production environment, Cisco ISR4K and ASR1K devices have been upgraded from IOS-XE version 16.12.5 to version 17.3.4a without encountering any licensing activation issues during reboots and upgrades.

It should be noted that the equipment is offline from any DNA.

The command "license boot level ****" is not present in the basic configuration of the equipment and when applying a backup configuration, there are no problems with booting or activating services associated with licenses (MPLS, LDP, etc...).

The equipment will be updated to version 17.9.5a and it seems that the behavior is different.

Some devices do not recover all services after rebooting and the command "license boot level ***" appears in the running configuration and the command "show romvar" does not always return the same state for the variable: LICENSE_BOOT_LEVEL.

What are the changes in license management on devices between these different versions and what commands are required to permanently activate licenses at each reboot?

Thank you.

[DanielP211]

Hello!

The licensing model changed to policy based smart licensing. 

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/routers/sl_using_policy/b-sl-using-policy/info_about.html

Do you intend for your routers to connect to smart licensing or will they be air-gapped?

BR

[Antoine Chemin]

Hello,

Thank you for your response.

I have noted the change in the licensing policy. It was already taken into account in version 17.3.4a, but the behavior seems to change in version 17.9.5a during certain restarts and the maintenance of license activation.

In my case this is a complete offline mode for a specific account.

Regards,