Need bgp enabled temporarily for a few months on Layer 3 3850 stack

[hmc250000]

We need BGP enabled temporarily for 3 months or so on our 3850 stack (5 switches). However the 3850 stack has an ipbase license installed and cannot configure BGP.  The upgrade license from ipbase to ipservices is around 10,000$ per switch.

- Can we get an evaluation version for 3 months to upgrade from ipbase to ipservices?

- If that's not possible can we upgrade the license on only the master switch in the stack?

And if you upgrade the license on only the master switch what happens if the BGP neighbor is physically connected to another stack member that is not the master? will you have to move the neighbor to the master switch? 

Any other ideas?

[Reza Sharifi]

And if you upgrade the license on only the master switch what happens if the BGP neighbor is physically connected to another stack member that is not the master? will you have to move the neighbor to the master switch? 

I don't recommend installing the license on the master only because if for whatever reason the master fails, you will lose all your BGP peering. It is always a good idea to have the same license on all the switches in a stack. 

You can install a 60 or 90-day eval license, and before the eval expiration date just disable BGP.

HTH

[Leo Laohoo]

A standalone 3650/3850 does not have the memory, CPU and flash resources to do something like this. 

Put it into a stack and that stack will turn to mush in a matter of weeks.  

[paul driver]

Hello
For a third of that price i am sure you could procure a route to be able to fulfil the requirement of accommodating bgp temporally, that is if you need bgp.
Depending on your topology default conditional static routing could be applicable in the interim

[hmc250000]

We are doing a SDWAN migration but because of the design BGP (static routing and OSPF is not an option) was chosen as routing protocol of choice between the L3 switch and SDWAN device. If we change that we will have to go back to the drawing board and will delay the project significantly.  

On our L3 switch we have the following routes:

- default internet route 0.0.0.0/0 with the firewall as gateway

- static route 192.168.0.0/16 to all other offices gateway is the VRRP (MPLS and DMVPN routers)

- static route to the LAN 192.168.1.0/24

- We need BGP between the SDWAN device and the L3 switch

Not sure how I can insert another 3900 spare router that we have so we can have the L3 switch learn the routes dynamically.

[MHM Cisco World]

I think that, 
BGP is by default run with standard license, BUT for FULL BGP you need additional costly license.
check this point.

[hmc250000]

We have an ipbase license (3850 stack) and see this when trying to configure BGP:

#router bgp 68120
Protocol not in this image
(config)#

#show license usage
License Authorization:
Status: IN-USE

(C3850-48 IP Base):
Description:
Count: 3
Version: 1.0
Status: IN-USE
Export status: NOT RESTRICTED

(C3850-24XS IP Base):
Description:
Count: 2
Version: 1.0
Status: IN-USE
Export status: NOT RESTRICTED

#

[Reza Sharifi]

As I said before, if this is a temp solution, you can just enable the "IP Services" license and use it for 2 or 3 months and then delete it.

Also, every time you change the license level, you need to reboot in order for it to take effect.

HTH