C9300 licences

[Support Cisco]

Hello, 

Like the WS-C3850 are announced, in my organisation, we wanted to change them by new 9300 series but for the licences many choice are available : 

1. DNA Advantage 
2. DNA Essentials
3. Network Advantage
4. Network Essentials 

And I want to be sure that the licence that i'll take will respond to my functionnalities. 

What i understand is with Network Essentials we have : 

Layer 2
Routed acces (RIP,EIGRP stub,OSPF (1000 routes))
PBR 
PIM Stub Multicast (1000 routes)
PVlan
VRRP
PBR
CDP
QoS
And many others functionalities.

The switch will be used for L3 switches and we are using these switches with static routing in small sites and OSPF for big sites (less than 1000 routes in total),VRRP in case of dual L3 switch and sometimes tracking (and of course all others L3 switches functionalities like SVI and ip routing)

So I want to be sure that the Network Essentials will be enough for these functionalities. 

And 2 last questions :

1. If in the futur we want to upgrade from Essentials to Advantage, what will be the cost ? To pay only the difference between Essentials to advantage or the normal price ? 
2. And I didn't really understand the difference between the DNA and Network kind of licences, can you explain me this difference ?

Thanks a lot for everything and I wish you the best for the new year. 

Best regards,

[Francesco Molino · Accepted solution]

Hi

If you're going to use only static routes and OSPF, then network essential is good enough. If you want to upgrade in the future to let's say BGP, you will need to purchase a license for network advantage.

I'm not an expert in licensing but let me try to give you the explanation. Before the explanation, I won't give you a price which could be changed by Cisco and people who will read this afterwards maybe put in a bad direction.

When you buy your switch you have network essential which is a perpetual license and a DNA essential which is a term license (3 years). When you want to upgrade, you will purchase an advantage license that will come with network advantage (perpetual) and DNA advantage term (3 years). After the term (3 years let's assume), you'll keep all features associated to either Network essential or Network advantage but you'll loose features associated to DNA.

DNA will add some capabilities to the switch (https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-9300-series-switches/nb-06-cat9300-ser-data-sheet-cte-en.html) like SD-Access, central management with DNA center and so forth for example. Take a look here (https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/software/dna-subscription-switching/index.html#~benefits), you have 3 DNA license level with dedicated features on each level.