Cisco Cisco License Manager SDK White Paper

White Paper

Page 1 of 5

Deploying Cisco License Manager 3.0 in Isolated Networks

Abstract

Cisco

License Manager is a lightweight, GUI-based application for managing Cisco IOS

Software activation and

licenses for Cisco devices such as Cisco Catalyst

3560-E and 3750-E Series Switches. It automates the licensing

workflows associated with fulfillment and accelerates deployment of licenses in customer networks. Cisco License

Manager resides at the customer premises and securely communicates with Cisco devices in the customer network

to automatically build an inventory of software licenses in the customer network. In addition, it securely interacts with

the license server at Cisco.com for license fulfillment, and it requires Internet connectivity from the host on which

Cisco License Manager is installed. Some customers have isolated networks with no Internet connectivity and

therefore may not be able to make full use of Cisco License Manager functionality. This paper describes how to

deploy Cisco License Manager in these scenarios to be able to securely use its full functionality.

Introduction

Some customers, especially in government and the financial and healthcare market segments, keep their networks

isolated from the Internet for security reasons. There is no Internet connectivity from their network operations

centers. As a result, these customers cannot use the full functionality of Cisco License Manager. They can

automatically discover Cisco devices with licensing capability and build up and maintain a networkwide inventory of

licenses. However, any functionality related to license fulfillment, such as retrieving SKU information from a Product

Authorization Key (PAK), obtaining licenses by associating devices with PAKs, and collecting all the licenses for a

device, cannot be used because these functions require secure Internet connectivity to the license server at

Cisco.com.

Approaches

You can take advantage of the full functionality of Cisco License Manager deployed in isolated networks use four

approaches: manual license fulfillment, use of proxy servers to access Cisco.com, two-stage deployment, and two-

host deployment.

Note:

All the scripts mentioned in these approaches are located in <$CLMHome>/bin, where <$CLMHome> is the

directory in which the Cisco License Manager server is installed.

Manual License Fulfillment

The simplest solution for customers looking to deploy Cisco License Manager in isolated networks is to manually

obtain license keys for their devices from the Cisco Product Registration portal at

https://www.cisco.com/go/license

Use the following script to install Cisco License Manager in the isolated network:

clm_import.bat <password> {<import-source> <license-file>}

Where password is the Cisco License Manager administrator password, import-source indicates the source of the

license file and should be set to –email because the license file is sent from the Cisco Product Registration portal in

an email, and license-file is the fully qualified location of the license file.

For example, the following script imports a license file located at C:\clm_email_license.xml:

clm_import.bat cisco -email C:\clm_email_license.xml