You purchase licenses to access the Prime Infrastructure features required to manage your network. Each license also controls the number of devices you can manage using those features.
You need a base license and the corresponding feature licenses (such as Assurance or Data Center licenses) to get full access to the respective Prime Infrastructure features to manage a set number of devices.
If you have installed Prime Infrastructure for the first time you may access the lifecycle and assurance features using the built-in evaluation license that is available by default. The default evaluation license is valid for 60 days for 100 devices. You can send a request to ask-prime-infrastructure@cisco.com if:
- You need to extend the evaluation period
- You need to increase the device count
- You already have a particular feature license and need to evaluate the other feature licenses
- To troubleshoot licenses, you will need to get details about the licenses that are installed on your system. Click Help > About Prime Infrastructure to access your license information.
When troubleshooting licenses, it is important to remember that Prime Infrastructure has five types of licenses:
- Base: Required for every Prime Infrastructure installation. The requirement stems primarily from the need to do accurate royalty accounting by knowing how many Prime Infrastructure instances have been purchased. A Base license is required for each instance of Prime Infrastructure, and is a prerequisite for all other license types.
- Lifecycle: Regulates the total number of devices under Prime Infrastructure management.
- Assurance: Regulates the total number of NetFlow devices under Prime Infrastructure management.
- Collector: Regulates the total number of NetFlow data flows per second that Prime Infrastructure can process.
- Data Center: Regulates the total number of data-center devices under Prime Infrastructure management.This license type was introduced in Prime Infrastructure version 2.2.
All five types of licenses are supplied as either evaluation or permanent licenses:
- Evaluation: These licenses permit or extend access to Prime Infrastructure for a pre-set period. You can apply only one evaluation license of each type (that is, only one Lifecycle evaluation license, one Assurance evaluation license, and so on). You cannot apply an evaluation license over a permanent form of the same license.
- Permanent License: These permit access to Prime Infrastructure features as specified and are not time-limited. Permanent licenses can be applied over evaluation licenses, and can also be applied incrementally (that is, you can have multiple permanent Assurance licenses, and so on).
- http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/net_mgmt/prime/infrastructure/2-2/administrator/guide/PIAdminBook/licensing.html#pgfId-1055426
