VCS\VCSE license migration from hardware to VM.

[afadeyev1]

Hi all,

I want to migrate my VCS\VCSE from hardware to virtual.

Both servers are covered by active maintenance contract.

How does licensing work in this case? What is the transfer procedure?

Any cost involved?

Thank you.

[ahmashar]

Hi,

you cannot transfer licenses from hardware version to vm version at will. you need to open TAC case or manage this through your account manager. Just a hint, you can get license transfer approval by returning the hardware version and Licensing team will rehost your licenses from HW version to VM version but it needs authorization via your account manager or TAC.

regards, Ahmad

[Paulo Souza · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Regarding Cisco VCS, in order to migrate from hardware to virtual machine, you will need to purchase a new license to make the transfer. These are the partnumbers you need:

R-VMVCS-C-M-K9

For HW Migration to E-Delivery Virtual VCS Control Only

R-VMVCS-E-M-K9

For HW Migration to E-Delivery Virtual VCS Expressway Only

Please, contact your Cisco representative to get further information.

After you purchase the license, the license rehost from appliance to VM will be made by a specific Cisco team, not the Global License Operation team, this is a different rehost process. You will have to send your request to vmvcs-sn-entry@cisco.com, this team will provide all the instruction to rehost your VCS license properly.

I hope this help.

Regards

Paulo Souza

Please rate replies and mark question as "answered" if applicable.

[afadeyev1]

It took some time to get a confirmation from my distrubutor, but you're absolutely right: need to order migration licenses.

One thing I still trying to get answer for is maintenance. I have more than a year left on my hardware servers - hopefully it can be transfered to virtual ones.

[Chris Swinney]

Hi afadeyev1,

Did you manage to find out the cost of these transfer licences?

Cheers

Chris

[Patrick Sparkman]

Both R-VMVCS-C-M-K9 and R-VMVCS-E-M-K9 are $12,360.00 list price.

[outlooker]

Theoretically, if the some one tried to move the licenses from HW to VMware, the real cost (without hacking) could be more than the licenses' list price.

[Chris Swinney]

Yeah. This was our thought.
 

[Patrick Sparkman]

I know this is old, but when you purchase the VCS HW to VM migration, they come with new service contracts.  Your existing HW will retain there current service contracts, and you can do with the HW, run it as a test VCS or as you wish.

[Chris Swinney]

Not quite "as you wish". The info we had back from Cisco was that:

What does the customer do with their existing appliance VCS?

With the purchase of the above migration PIDs, the customer agrees to take the appliance VCS out of their production network and replace it with the newly created VMVCS.  They may continue to use the appliance VCS it in a beta, lab, or testing environment.

and

• Customer can move all of their prior licenses to virtual VCS and keep their appliance VCS (as long as they agree to take it out of production).

In addition, you cannot move the maintenance contract between the HW and VM VCS, so it "is in the customer's best interest to time the migration at the close of a contract on the appliance VCS"

Cheers

Chris

[Patrick Sparkman]

That's the same response I had received when we did our migration.  We're currently using our VCS in a lab environment.

[jigneshjani]

Hi Patrick,

Even i have similar scenario like yours (used R-VMVCS-C-M-K9 for moving licences from hw to VM)

Now my question is, do i need to consider this licences during annual maintenance contract or they are one time use / no more significant to be considered for maintenance coverage 

[Patrick Sparkman]

Essentially you'll have two VCS fully licensed, your old HW VCS and new VM VCS.  We're still paying for support for our old HW VCS even though it's in a lab environment, only because if it went down we'd have nothing to test with, and for all of our maintenance costs, the support for that single piece of hardware is a drop in the bucket.

[briancgrace]

Is this now a free part number?

[Patrick Sparkman]

When we migrated our hardware VCS to VM, both R-VMVCS-C-M-K9 and R-VMVCS-E-M-K9 were approximately $12K each (list price).