Limiting session count in ISR 4K CUBE with smart licensing

[Elliot Dierksen]

I am getting ready to implement a CUBE with smart licensing for the session count. In earlier versions I used the "license capacity" option of "mode border element" to keep from overflowing the ITSP talk path limit. I had to do this because the way CUBE counts active talk paths seems to be different than the way the ITSP counts it, and it caused issues when I hit the limit. The license capacity option is gone with smart licensing which leads to my question. Can I reserve cube session licenses for a device, and tell it not to exceed its reservation? I was trying to figure out by looking here: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-xml/ios/voice/cube/configuration/cube-book/voi-cube-cisco-smart-licensing.html but I didn't see what I was looking for.

[Vaijanath Sonvane]

Hi,

You can configure "mode border-element license capacity <>" command in IOS XE releases 16.11, 16.12 and 17.1. Even though you configure this command, call processing will not be limited if the number of sessions exceeds the license capacity configuration, nor if the license request is ‘out of compliance’. Starting IOS XE release 17.2.1, license use is calculated dynamically and the license capacity option has been deprecated. I don't think there is any alternative at this moment. I would suggest to open Cisco TAC case for this issue.

[Roger Kallberg]

From 17.2 or possibly 17.3 this has changed. It reports actual usage to SL over a period of time, default per week as from what I’ve been informed.

However this is not a limited factor, meaning that  passing the set limit, for the old setting, or over usage of actual available sessions in SL should per the information we have got from our account team at Cisco and from what is presented in sessions from Cisco Live have a capping function. If you want to actually cap number of calls you would need to use other settings for this.

[Vaijanath Sonvane]

For IOS XE releases before Cisco IOS XE Amsterdam 17.2.1r:

mode border-element [license capacity sessions]

For IOS XE releases Cisco IOS XE Amsterdam 17.2.1r to Cisco IOS XE Amsterdam 17.3.1a:

mode border-element [ license {capacity sessions | periodicity {mins value | hours value |days value}}]

From Cisco IOS XE Amsterdam 17.3.2 and Cisco IOS XE Bengaluru 17.4.1a onwards:

mode border-element [ license periodicity {hours <8-23> | days <1-30> }]

There is no more capacity limits. 

[Roger Kallberg]

It never was a capacity limit. To limit the number of calls other configuration means in IOS would be needed.

[Elliot Dierksen]

Here is what I get when I try to apply that.

ORL4431SIP(conf-voi-serv)#mode border-element license capacity 500
ERROR: CUBE SIP trunk licensing is now based on dynamic session counting. Static license capacity configuration has been deprecated

I was looking for a way to cap session counts at the device level. I know I can apply connection limits on a per dial peer basis, but I don't know that I am going to have one dial peer that every call would pass through. That seems to be a distinct backward step in functionality to me.

[Roger Kallberg]

Again this never capped the number of calls. As an example if this was set to 100 it would allow the 100+ call to go through. I can check in our CCA SBCs what we do in them as we do cap the number of calls in them and we do not do it on the dial peers.

[Roger Kallberg · Accepted solution]

This is what we have on our SBCs for Webex CCA.

call treatment cause-code busy
call treatment on
call threshold global total-calls low 999 high 1000

This limits the number of calls to 1000 and will again allow calls as it falls down to 999.

[Elliot Dierksen]

Perfect, thanks!