ASA 5545-X AnyConnect Licence

[islicensing@rm.com]

Hello All,

After a couple of days reading a bunch of articles, AnyConnect licence documents, and looking around the forums here, we're still a little unsure about how the AnyConnect licences work for a new ASA 5545-X.  Hopefully you can help?

• We have a requirement to install a new ASA pair (two 5545-X) with 100 AnyConnect VPN users.
• We have the two ASAs running as a failover active/standby, FirePOWER access via ASDM, etc., configured.
• Going through a supplier, we've been provided a L-AC-PLS-P-100 licence (Cisco AnyConnect 100 User Plus Perpetual (ASA License Key)).
• After registering this on the Cisco.com licence site, it shows 99,999 quantity.  We selected "1" and applied the new activation-key to the active ASA.
• Checking using show activation-key, the value for "AnyConnect Premium Peers" went from 3 to 2,500!
• Checking using show vpn-sessiondb detail, it is showing "Device Total VPN capacity: 2,500".

We've tried reading up a great deal about the licencing and how to license, however the more that is read the more unsure we become.  We've tried comparing to some older ASAs, however it appears their licence model and what they show is wildly different (+5 years old easily).

Here's our questions:

> Was selecting quantity:1 out of 99,999 the right thing to do?

> Shouldn't we have expected to see that number change to 100 and not 2,500?

> To make use of AnyConnect, to get some clients connecting, etc. do we need any other licences, such as L-AC-PLS-P-G?

I'm hoping with answers to these, things will become clearer to us.

Thank you.

Kind regards,

Stephen

[Bogdan Nita]

> Was selecting quantity:1 out of 99,999 the right thing to do?

Yes. The 99,999 is there because Cisco lets you use the anyconnect licenses bought on any ASA you have. The licenses are not additive so fulfilling 2 licenses for the same SN will not double the number of licenses.

> Shouldn't we have expected to see that number change to 100 and not 2,500?

I would expect the number of AnyConnect Premium Peers to be 100. What is the user count in the license file? I believe you can see that if you open the license file with a text editor.

> To make use of AnyConnect, to get some clients connecting, etc. do we need any other licences, such as L-AC-PLS-P-G?

You probably have a L-AC-PLS-P-G licenses. L-AC-PLS-P-G is a general license that lets you then choose the number of users you need. One of the options available is the one you have purchased: L-AC-PLS-P-100-S.

[Peter Koltl]

ASA show commands do not reveal the installed license quantity but the hardware limits of the box.