Cisco Cisco License Manager SDK White Paper

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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

http://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

Once Cisco License Manager has imported the license file, it can then deploy the licenses to devices and keep its

inventory up to date. However, this approach can be cumbersome if the number of devices in the network is large.

Using Proxy Servers to Access Cisco.com

Cisco License Manager supports proxy servers to access the Cisco.com license portal for various license

operations. You can configure your proxy server details in Cisco License Manager by providing the proxy server

address, HTTP and HTTPS port numbers, as well as the username and password for the proxy server. Cisco

License Manager will connect to the Cisco.com license portal through the proxy server for all transactions. Please

see Cisco License Manager Users Guide for step-by-step instructions.

Two-Stage Deployment

Cisco License Manager supports a two-stage deployment model where it is installed on a host in the isolated

network (Figure 1). Cisco License Manager has connectivity to network devices and discovers Cisco devices with

licensing capability and builds an inventory of licenses in the isolated network. Once this is done, you can

physically move Cisco License Manager to a network domain with Internet connectivity and fulfill licenses by

securely communicating to the license server at Cisco.com and obtaining and saving the licenses to its database.

Cisco License Manager can then be moved back to the original isolated network domain to deploy previously

obtained licenses to network devices.

Cisco License Manager is a lightweight application and can even be installed on low-powered machines such as

laptops, if the number of managed devices is relatively small and there are no concurrent clients so that network

operators can physically move between network domains easily. Please see the Cisco License Manager data

sheet for exact minimum system requirements for larger deployments.