Cisco Cisco 5508 Wireless Controller Information Guide
© 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
3
Wireless Access Point Smart Licensing for Cisco 5520, 8540, and Virtual Wireless Controllers
Q&A
Cisco Public
Q
What is the main difference between traditional
node-locked and RTU licenses and the new
smart licensing?
A
The traditional node-locked and RTU licenses are tied to a serial
number and reside on the wireless controller, while smart licenses
reside on the cloud portal. For smart licensing, the wireless
controller reports only the usage (how many access points are
connected to it). Since the licenses are not tied to a serial number,
they can be pooled across the same product families.
Q
Since smart licenses are tied to a customer and
not to individual devices, does this mean the
customer will be able to pool
all their wireless
controllers’ access point licenses and use them
on
any wireless controller?
A
No. Although with smart licensing, the licenses are not tied
to a particular serial number, the smart licensing portal allows
wireless access point licenses to be pooled
only within
the same wireless controller product families. Among the
controllers that are smart license enabled, Cisco considers
the 5520 and 8540 to belong to the same product family, and
the vWLC to be a separate product family. So access point
licenses can be pooled across all 5520 and 8540 controllers.
Access point licenses can also be pooled across all vWLCs.
However, 5520 and 8540 access point licenses cannot be
pooled together with vWLC access point licenses.
Q
Why are there separate product family pools
within smart licensing?
A
Note that the customer does not have to pay anything extra
for smart licensing, and it is primarily meant to ease license
management and monitoring. It is not designed to provide
extra entitlement benefits. Customers wishing to port licenses
across all wireless controllers should look at procuring Cisco
ONE Software licenses.
Q
How does the pooling work?
A
All licenses bought by a customer for a particular wireless
controller product family are pooled together. A license from
the pool will be used when an access point connects to a
controller that has smart licensing enabled and belongs to that
product family. For example, say a customer buys 300 access
point licenses for the 5520 and has three 5520 controllers
(5520-1, 5520-2, and 5520-3) in the network. If 53 access
points are connected to 5520-1, the available license pool in
the smart portal will go down to 247 (300 – 53). These 247
licenses are available for 5520-2 and 5520-3 to use. If 5
access points are disconnected from 5520-1, 5 licenses will
be returned to the pool and 252 (247 + 5) licenses will be
available for 5520-2 and 5520-3 to use. If 270 access points
are then connected to 5520-2, the customer will go out of
compliance (using 270 licenses with only 252 available) and
will be notified. The network operations, however, will not stall
while the customer is out of compliance.
Q
Does the smart licensing portal distinguish
between base and adder licenses?
A
No, the smart licensing portal does not distinguish between
base and adder licenses.
Q
Does the smart portal support the use of Cisco
ONE access point licenses that the customer gets
as part of the Cisco ONE Software suite?
A
Cisco ONE Software license support is not available on the
smart portal in AireOS Release 8.2.