WAN Automation Engine smart licensing

WAN Automation Engine Smart Licensing

Smart Licensing provides a flexible software licensing model that simplifies how you activate and manage WAE licenses across your organization. Cisco WAE has been supporting Smart Licensing since the 7.2 release. This document provides a primer on using Smart Licensing on Cisco WAE.

Before you proceed, ensure that

• You have a valid SMART Account with administration privileges.
• Cisco WAE server has been installed and is in RUNNING state.

At this point, no licenses have been activated or installed on the WAE server.

Note:

• If you are migrating from a traditional node-based license, the MATE_Dedicated.lic license file will need to be removed from the current installation before proceeding.
• If you use WAE function packs, the function pack license (WAEFUNCTIONPACKS.lic) will need to be copied to the $HOME/.cariden/etc directory even if smart licensing is enabled.

Check requisites

You may confirm the status of the current WAE server installation using the following commands

[wae@wae ~]$ supervisorctl status
wae:kafka                        RUNNING   pid 6519, uptime 0:06:04
wae:logrotate                    RUNNING   pid 6518, uptime 0:06:04
wae:wae-monitor                  RUNNING   pid 6517, uptime 0:06:04
wae:waectl                       RUNNING   pid 6516, uptime 0:06:04
wae:zookeeper                    RUNNING   pid 6515, uptime 0:06:04

[wae@wae ~]$ license_check
License files searched:
/home/wae/.cariden/etc;/home/wae/wae7/etc;/home/wae/wae7/etc

There are no licenses available.

System HostID(s): 5254007e0f82

Run license_install on WAE server

The next step is to run the license_install command on the WAE server. Replace 198.18.134.30 with the IP address of your WAE server and <password> with the WAE admin user password. Smart Licensing will create a MATE_Smart.lic file under the $WAE_HOME/.cariden/etc directory.

[wae@wae ~]$ source /home/wae/wae7/waerc
[wae@wae ~]$ license_install -smart-lic-host 198.18.134.30 -smart-lic-port 2022 -smart-lic-username admin -smart-lic-password <password>
License successfully installed.

[wae@wae ~]$ ls /home/wae/.cariden/etc
MATE_Smart.lic

[wae@wae ~]$ license_check
There are no licenses available.

WAE Server: "198.18.134.30"

Generate registration token using Cisco Smart Software Manager

The next step is to generate a registration token to register the WAE Server with Smart Licensing. Proceed to software.cisco.com and select Smart Software Manager > Manage Licenses.

Under General > Product Instance Registration Tokens, select New Token. Enter the description, expiry date, and desired number of users. After the registration token is generated, download the file. Use a text editor to open and copy the Token string for use in the next step.

Enable and register WAE server for Smart Licensing

Login to WAE Web UI (https://<wae-ip-address>:8443/) using the admin user and password. On the WAE Web UI Dashboard, select Smart Licensing.

Next, select Enable Smart Licensing.

Then, select Register to register WAE server with Cisco Smart Software Licensing.

Enter the Token string into the registration token text box and select Register. If registration is successful, you will be prompted Registration completed successfully.

Select desired licenses

You may select the desired licenses and node count. Do not press enter after entering the node count. When you are done with selection, select Submit at the bottom of the page.

Confirm License status

The WAE Smart Licensing UI will display the selected license and node count after a page refresh.

Running the license_check command on the WAE server will show the corresponding feature licenses associated with the WAE server, together with the expiration date, licensed nodes, and compliance status.

[wae@wae7 ~]$ license_check

Product: WAE Design
==========================================================================================================

Feature                   Expiration Date           Licensed Nodes       Status
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MD_LSPLoadshare           2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_Sim                    2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_Demands                2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_RSVP                   2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_BGP                    2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_Changeover             2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_Nodes                  2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_ArchiveUI              2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_Users                  2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_QoS                    2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_ParseConfigs           2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_DmdDeduct              2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_ExpOptTactical         2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_SimAnalysis            2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_SegmentRouting         2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_MetricOptTactical      2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_ParseIGPDB             2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_MetricOpt              2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_GUI                    2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MD_ExpOpt                 2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance

Product: WAE Collector
==========================================================================================================

Feature                   Expiration Date           Licensed Nodes       Status
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MC_Users                  2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MC_BGP                    2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MC_Login                  2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MC_ParseIGPDB             2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MC_ParseConfigs           2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MC_QoS                    2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MC_LDP                    2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MC_SNMP                   2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MC_RSVP                   2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance
MC_Nodes                  2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance


Product: WAE Live
==========================================================================================================

Feature                   Expiration Date           Licensed Nodes       Status
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ML_Users                  2021 Nov 17               50                   InCompliance


WAE Server: "198.18.134.30"

Note: If Cisco WAE is using Cisco Smart Licensing (instead of traditional licensing), the license_check command will not return the license expiry date, but instead will return the expiration date for license authorization. This expiration date is usually 90 days from the previous authorization and the Smart Licensing agent will automatically send a renewal request 30 days prior to expiration. This expiration date does not correlate to the actual license expiry date.

To check the license expiry date, see the license entitlement details under Cisco Smart Software Manager (CSSM) at Cisco Software Central.

In addition, here are some additional details on the options available under WAE WebUI > Smart Licensing.

a. Renew Authorization: Renews the authorization by sending renew message to the Cisco Licensing Cloud. Normally the authorization renewal is automatic and occurs every 30 days. If needed, this can be invoked to force a manual renewal.

b. Renew Registration: Re-register the product instance (renews the ID certificate) by sending renew message to the Cisco Licensing Cloud. Normally the renew operation is automatic and occurs as specified in the previous register or renew response message. There may be times that application needs to trigger a renew operation.

c. Reregister: The idtoken used for registration has a validity specified while generating the token in CSSM. Once the token expires, user will have to register using a new token using this option.

d. Deregister: This option can be used by the user to deregister from Cisco CSSM. If licenses has been checked out, they will be returned to evaluation mode.

e. Disable Smart Software Licensing: This is for disabling Smart Licensing altogether.

Under normal circumstances, a, b & c should not be service impacting.

When a particular license expires or auto-renew authorization does not happen, that license’s status will change to either AuthorizedPeriodExpired or NotAuthorized. In this state, the product will only work once the licenses and authorization are renewed. There will also be notifications from Cisco Smart Software Manager (CSSM) on the virtual account when the license is about to expire or has expired.

In addition, license authorization is performed automatically every 30 days. If authorization is successful and then the system loses access to CSSM, it should be fine for at least 30 days or until the authorization expiry date is near.

Install WAE Design License

Start WAE Design client, and select File > License > Install. Select Use smart license. Enable WAE Design for Smart Licensing by entering the WAE Server details and then selecting Ok.

Perform a license refresh and then restart the WAE Design Client. License check will show the installed licenses.

Note: the WAE Server NETCONF port (2022 by default) must always be reachable from the WAE Design client for Smart Licensing.

Troubleshooting

Cisco WAE searchs for MATE_Smart.lic (if Smart Licensing is used) in the following order.

• $CARIDEN_ROOT/etc/
• $CARIDEN_HOME/etc/
• $HOME/.cariden/etc/

The $HOME variable is defined in wae.ini (symlinked from /etc/supervisor.d/wae.ini).

[program:waectl]
user=wae
# The NCS_JAVA_VM_OPTIONS env variable can be set below to modify the jvm heap/stack size and other jvm parameters
environment=HOME="/home/wae", NCS_JAVA_VM_OPTIONS="-Xmx16G -Xms4G -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -XX:HeapDumpPath=/home/wae/wae-run/logs/ -Djava.io.tmpdir=/home/wae/wae-run/work/", TMPDIR="/home/wae/wae-run/work/"

This is apparent (under -home parameter) when we perform a ps auxw on the WAE server to search for the ncs.smp process, e.g.

[root@wae]# ps auxw | grep ncs.smp
wae         2792  4.8  0.3 4535464 221504 ?      Sl   05:58   0:07 /home/wae/wae7/lib/ext/nso/lib/ncs/erts/bin/ncs.smp -K true -P 4000000 -- -root /home/wae/wae7/lib/ext/nso/lib/ncs -progname ncs -- -home /home/wae -- -pa /home/wae/wae7/lib/ext/nso/lib/ncs/patches -boot ncs -ncs true -noshell -noinput -foreground -yaws embedded true -kernel gethost_poolsize 16 -stacktrace_depth 24 -shutdown_time 30000 -conffile /home/wae/wae-run/wae.conf -max_fds 1000000 --

Check that the MATE_Smart.lic file exists in the correct directory. If the wae.ini configuration file has been modified, ensure that supervisorctl reload has been performed.

On the WAE Server, set verbosity to 60 (debug) for the respective nimos prior to running a collection. Files in $WAE_RUN/packages/cisco-wae-nimo/priv/work/<network>/ will contain essential information pertaining to licensing. $WAE_RUN/logs/wae-java-vm.log and $WAE_RUN/logs/cisco-wae-smart-license.log, will also contain information associated with licensing.