Smart Licensing for CUCM 12.X
Overview
Cisco Smart Software Licensing (aka CSSM) simplifies the licensing experience across the enterprise making it easier to purchase, deploy, track and renew Cisco Software.
It provides visibility into license ownership and consumption through a single, simple user interface.
Think of Smart Licensing as a Software Inventory Management System that answers two questions:
- What have I purchased?
- What is it that I am using?
With Smart Licensing, customer will be licensed, not the Product Installation.
Licenses are pooled for the entire account/sub account and will provide real time transparent information to the Customer, Cisco, and Partners on upcoming License Needs (Shortages, Upcoming Subscriptions).
Main target is "Do No Harm to the Customer Network due to shortage of license".
- What is the problem with current licensing model Cisco Wide?
With current model customer has to go over to 6 steps and over 20 tools, which are all different type of product. Customer has to manage to keep track of their PAK and licenses. Doing business with Cisco is like doing business with different companies.
With Smart licensing, this process is simplified to 3 steps and one tool. Once customer place an order and all the information required will be saved on central database on cisco.com, and the software with smart license enabled will be ready to use and customer will not be needed wait to receive the PAK and to enter PAK to install the license. All information will be on single portal and customer can view and manage all its devices in their infrastructure from single place by entering company identifier (smart account).
They will have a complete view of what they have bought. There will be no more PAK registration, no node locked, its company specific and can use on multiple compatible devices.
How it works, Deployment Models
- Customer Place an order on Cisco Commerce and they associate the order with smart account, this information is populated on Smart Software Manager which reside on on cisco.com. Now they have complete view on what they have ordered and purchases.
- The product that have smart licensing enabled (via CLI or GUI), will register to CSSM, they will report license consumption to CSSM. Two models are there to report the usage:
- Direct Model - Customer Licensing information is where security is not major concerned. Customer can use HTTPS proxy or Transport Gateway to allow devices to talk to the through private network. This will become the centralized access point for CSSM, all of this is HTTPS so it will be secured.
- Mediated Deployment Model - This is for the customer who have security concerns. They do not want their devices to talk directly to Cisco.com from their private network. They can install CSSM Satellite on a VM which will reside on customer premises and act as CSSM. It can be synchronized with CSSM on cisco.com monthly or weekly or totally disconnected. For completely disconnected customer who do not have internet connection from their network, they can do file upload and download. We need to have the synchronization to know the entitlement; recommendation is to do the sync in 30 days.
Smart Account and Virtual Account
Cisco Smart Accounts is a new, time-saving method of customer or partner-managed software license asset management. Through an account on the cisco.com website, it lets you view and control access to all of your Cisco software licenses and entitlements across your organization
After you set up a Smart Account, you have the flexibility to create sub accounts (virtual accounts) to help manage your licenses for departments, areas, or locations within your organization. Licenses can be pooled within virtual accounts as needed.
For more information on Smart Account and Virtual Account please refer to Smart Account And Virtual Accounts and learn more on it.
Cisco Smart Software Manager
Its the single portal for customers to view their licenses and entitlements. For more information please refer to Cisco Smart Software Manager.
Cisco Smart Software Manager Satellite
For customers who, either for policy or network reachability reasons, do not want to manage their Cisco products directly using Cisco Smart Software Manager residing at software.cisco.com, they can choose to install Cisco Smart Software Manager satellite on-premises. Devices or software product are registered and report license consumption to the Smart Software Manager satellite as though it were a replicate of the Cisco Smart Software Manager hosted within the customers premises.
Satellite Deployment Models
Connected
It is easier deployment of Satellite. Used when there is direct connectivity from Satellite to Cisco.com. Smart Account Synchronization happens automatically though its optional.
Disconnected
Used when there is NO direct connectivity from Satellite to Cisco.com. Smart Account Synchronization must be done using file upload and download manually.
For more information on Satellite please refer to Cisco Smart Account Manager Satellite CSSM Satellite.
Documentation
https://www-author.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/rel_notes/12_0_1/smart_licensing_eft/cucm_b_smart-licensing-documentation-for-eft-1201.html
Note: This is in final review state. We will post the final document links once it is available.
Cisco Smart License Manager service
Cisco Smart License Manager service is a network service running only on CUCM publisher. Since this is a network service, it will be running all the time and cannot be started or stopped from UI or CLI.
SInce there is no service running on subscriber, none of the smart licensing operations can be done from the sub. The CLI commands also do not provide any output on sub,
Note: We will keep updating this page for FAQs
