OFFLINE traditional licence migration to smart licencing on IOS-XE

[Philip D'Ath]

I have a customer with a bunch of ISR4331 routers running IOS-XE 16.9.  These routers are air-gapped and have no connection to the Internet.  They have APPX licences.

They want me to upgrade them to something after 16.10.  This means I must migrate the existing licences to smart licences, since smart licencing is compulsory, and the existing licences won't apply anymore.

I have had a look at the traditional to smart licencing migration guide:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-xml/ios/smart-licensing/qsg/b_Smart_Licensing_QuickStart/m_sl_migrate.html 

But this requires the routers to have an Internet connection.  I can't figure out a way to do this 100% offline.

Repeat, there is no way I am going to be able to connect these devices to the Internet.  I won't be able to use the token method (requires an Internet connection).

I had a look a the offline enrollment process, but it won't let me do this as they don't show as having smart licences available.  It seems you have to do the licence migration first to get the licences into smart licencing before you can register a device offline.

ps. Yes, I have done the ROMMON upgrade to be able to use a more recent 16.x image.

[balaji.bandi]

I had this situation in one of the remote where they do not have an internet connection, I have upgraded, used my PC as a Proxy to connect 4 G to register the device and it works.

yes, you need to convert the PAK to a smart License, the License team has chat people do it for you very fast.

we do have latest Cat 9300 we use below method ( check this may help you)

https://community.cisco.com/t5/cisco-software-documents/new-deployment-method-for-smart-licensing/ta-p/4167670

[Philip D'Ath]

I would not be allowed to use my computer as a proxy.  The licences shipped with the routers pre-installed some time ago and there were no seperate PAK codes given.

I would not be able to use IOS-XE 17.x.  It would require the entire network to be re-validated.  Not a small job.

[Philip D'Ath]

ps. I need something that can work via a console cable.  I won't be allowed to plug a machine into this environment using a network cable.

[balaji.bandi]

I can understand the situation, Maybe TAC can be able to assist you here along with the License team. ( sorry being not much helpful here).

Maybe they consider this as a usecase and others may have the same issue moving forward, they should generate some code on the smart License server matching with SR NO, so we can paste it on the console.

[Leo Laohoo]

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@Philip D'Ath wrote:

The licences shipped with the routers pre-installed some time ago and there were no seperate PAK codes given.

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@Philip D'Ath, 

Leave the routers alone.  If they came with licenses pre-installed nothing is going to happen to them when the counter runs down to "0". 

[Arshad Safrulla · Accepted solution]

@Philip D'Ath you can open a case with licensing team with the Cisco Sales order number to migrate the traditional licenses to smart licensing. Once the licenses are visible on the smart account, you may ask the licensing team to enable SLR/PLR in the smart account. Recently I noticed most of the smart accounts have this enabled by default, but if the option is not there you may request licensing team.

Click on the license reservation and then follow the process. at the router you need to configure the below. 

conf t

license smart reservation

exit

!

license smart reservation request local

!

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-xml/ios/smart-licensing/qsg/b_Smart_Licensing_QuickStart/b_Smart_Licensing_QuickStart_chapter_01000.html

At no point you will need Internet Access to the router, but you may have to upload the license authorization code manually to the router (though usb or tftp) as I noticed when you copy and paste the code it doesn't work.

[balaji.bandi]

@Arshad Safrulla  Good Stuff, is this only working for routers ? or Switches also ( never tried it - as per the docs it does just confirmation if one tried it).

[Arshad Safrulla]

@balaji.bandi This is working, I have more than 1000 devices using this licensing scheme. There are some limitations though;

1. In WLC's you need licenses for your standby controller. For eg:- if you have bough 1000 AP's with licenses in case of failover online smart licensing methods will allow the standby WLC to sync with smart account for licensing, but in this case you need to have licenses for the standby controller. But since the license limitations are enforced in IOS-XE platforms you can still use the standby WLC.

2. In CUCM there were issues when there are multiple levels of licenses available, using this method was always using the higher tier licenses. I did not check with the new Flex license schema. But this is what I heard from my IPT team.

3. If you RMA a switch in a stack or change a switch in a stack, then it becomes little complicated.

etc.

[balaji.bandi]

Thank you for the information, it was very informative.

In Excel - which row do we need to refer to and confirm this works with the device (apologies if this was addressed already).

Monday Morning i was to try some Cat 9300  and Cat 9120