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A system supported by a single data center does not require a system license. When you initially deploy this product, you are given a 180-day trial period that allows an unlimited number of Trial Host licenses. After your trial period expires, you are required to purchase Permanent Host licenses for all users who host meetings. Licenses are not required for users who schedule or attend meetings, but do not host any meetings.
If you deploy a system supported by multiple data centers, you must purchase Multi-data Center (MDC) feature licenses. There is no grace period or trial period for MDC licenses. MDC licenses must be hosted on the primary data center before attempting to join data centers in an MDC system. To deploy a MDC system, see Creating a Multi-data Center (MDC) System.
There is no trial period for a new Multi-data Center (MDC). MDC feature licenses are purchased for your system size before data centers are joined. The MDC licenses are hosted on the primary data center; the data center that another data center is joined with to form a system, typically the data center that is running the license manager. If you upgrade or grow an existing MDC system, you must purchase the licenses of the correct version and size in 90 days or less.
Permanent MDC Licenses—Purchased to allow data centers to be joined into a single MDC system. Each system must have a license; therefore, a minimum of two licenses must be purchased.
Grace MDC Licenses—Limited to 90 days, you can upgrade or grow data centers in a MDC system before purchasing the required licenses. After this system modification, you have 90 days to resolve any license issues, such as purchasing MDC licenses for a larger system. If licenses of the appropriate size and version are not installed before the Grace MDC period expires, the data center that is not hosting the License Manager is disabled.
Demonstration MDC Licenses—Temporary license support for a MDC system. Issuing Demonstration MDC licenses is determined by the vendor on a case-by-case basis and the duration that the licenses are valid is determined when the licenses are issued.
This product has Host-based Licensing requiring that you purchase a license for each user that hosts meetings or is manually assigned a license. A user does not consume a Host license by attending or scheduling a meeting on behalf of others. The license usage calculation for reporting purposes occurs once per month, for example, once from January 1 through 31, and once from February 1 through 28, and so forth.
Note | When upgrading from a previous version, all licenses that were on the original system are released from their assignment to users. Users can reacquire licenses by hosting meetings or being manually assigned licenses. This is also true when installing a Multi-data Center (MDC) system. Host licenses are lost on the data center joining the MDC system. Those licenses can be re-hosted on the MDC system after the join. |
From the Reports page, you can request a report that provides the total number of licenses consumed. In addition, we recommend that you view the PDF Summary Report that shows license consumption trends. By viewing the overall license trend, you can plan for future license purchases more effectively, to match the growing adoption of this system within your company.
A Host license is required to host a meeting. A license is not required to schedule or attend a meeting. The types of Host licenses are:
Permanent Host License—An installed Host license purchased to allow a user to host meetings that is assigned to that user the first time that person hosts a meeting. A Host license can be manually assigned to a user by an administrator; a user does not have to wait to host a meeting to be assigned a license. If there is a user with a Grace license and a Permanent Host license becomes available, either by removal of a host or the purchase of additional Permanent Host licenses, the permanent license is assigned to the host with a Grace license.
In version 2.5 or higher, a user never consumes more than one Permanent Host license and can host a maximum of two meetings at the same time. Also, a Permanent Host license is released for use by another host only when the user of that license is deactivated (as opposed to version 2.0 where the licenses of hosts that do not host meetings for a period of time are released). If someone attempts to host a meeting and:
There are no licenses available.
The license of the host has expired since the meeting was scheduled or the meeting host has been deactivated.
An error message displays and the meeting cannot be started. (See Exceeding the Number of Available Licenses.)
Trial Host License—Temporary Host licenses assigned automatically in a system that is in the Trial period.
Grace Host License—A temporary license consumed by a meeting host in a Permanent License environment where all of the permanent licenses have been consumed. A limited number of Grace Host Licenses are temporarily available for a system with Permanent Host Licenses (a system not in a trial period) if the number of installed licenses is briefly exceeded. Warnings about the excess licenses are displayed to the administrator. Temporary Grace Host licenses in this scenario are associated with a user for 180 days. When a Permanent Host license becomes available, the Permanent Host license is associated with the user and the Grace license is released. If after 180 days the user with a Grace Host license has not acquired a Permanent Host license, the user is no longer allowed to host meetings. (See Exceeding the Number of Available Licenses for more information on system behavior when the number of Permanent Host licenses is exceeded.)
When a user with a Permanent Host license is deactivated, the license is returned to the license pool. Active users with Grace Host licenses are not automatically granted the Permanent Host license. You must select Reserve license (see Editing Users) to release the Grace Host license and grant that user a Permanent Host license. Otherwise, the Permanent Host license remains in the pool until a new user is added to the system and hosts a meeting. In this event, the unused permanent license is associated with the new user.
Demonstration License—Temporary host licenses with varying valid durations provided by a vendor on a case-by-case basis. (They are primarily used for testing.) When these licenses expire, your system returns to its previous license status. A Demonstration Host license expires whether or not it is assigned to a user.
Local Host Licenses—Licenses managed on the local data center.
Remote Host Licenses—Licenses managed by using Active Directory.
Expired Host License—A temporary host license that has been invalidated because the time allotted has been exceeded. A user with an Expired Host license can still attend meetings and schedule meetings for others.
This section describes the relationship between the status of users and how host licenses are counted:
Participant—An individual that attends meetings, but does not host meetings, and does not have control over the host features, such as presenting content unless the participant is designated by a host to be the presenter. No host licenses are consumed by meeting participants. This user can also schedule meetings on behalf of others without consuming a host license.
Meeting Host—Schedules and attends meetings in the capacity of the meeting host, and is allowed control over selected features, such as identifying a presenter or muting another participant. Hosting a meeting consumes a license and that license is retained by that user until the user is deactivated. The Host license can take several forms. (See Types of Host Licenses for more information on Host license forms.)
Alternate Host—Identified when the meeting is scheduled as someone who can assume the host role in the absence of the meeting host. If the meeting host who scheduled the meeting does not attend, the alternate host is given control over most of the same features as the meeting host. The license needed to host the meeting is validated against the status of the user who scheduled the meeting. In other words, the user who scheduled the meeting must have a valid license at the time of the meeting, even if that user does not attend the meeting.
Join Before Host (JBH)—Allows participants to join a meeting before the arrival of the host or an alternate host.
Overlapping Meetings—Two or more meetings that are scheduled during the same time of day by the same host. Starting with CWMS Release 2.5, a user can host a maximum of two simultaneous meetings, consuming only one license; no user can host more than two meetings at the same time.
During the free trial period, the number of licenses available on any size system is only limited by the size of the system. Once you have purchased and installed licenses on your system, you must make sure you have enough Installed licenses to accommodate all hosts on your system.
If the number of installed licenses is briefly exceeded, a Grace license can be acquired by a new host. (Grace licenses are described in detail in Types of Host Licenses.)
If the number of active hosts on your system regularly exceeds the number of Installed licenses, an email is sent to the administrator indicating that the number of Installed licenses has been exceeded and recommends purchasing additional licenses. You must reduce your license usage or increase the number of licenses on your system so that it meets or exceeds the number of active hosts.
The audit manager runs once per day (at 2:00 a.m.) to adjust the number of licenses used as necessary. If the number of hosts has dropped below the number of Installed licenses, the licenses exceeded condition ends. If the number of active hosts still exceeds the number of licenses, email is sent to the administrator each month indicating that the licenses exceeded condition still exists.
Starting in version 2.5, users with licenses can continue to use the system, but users without licenses cannot host meetings. If there are no licenses available when an unlicensed user schedules a meeting, the user is notified that they might not be able to host that meeting due to the lack of licenses.
In all versions, the Administration site continues to be available, so an administrator can sign in, add licenses, and restore users ability to host meetings and access recordings.
During the system trial period, use your dashboard to view usage, resource history, and meeting trends to determine how many users are hosting and attending meetings on your system. After you have been using the product for a few months, you can use your monthly summary reports and customized details reports to help you determine how many Permanent Host licenses you need. Your monthly summary reports display statistics on service adoption and user license usage. Service Adoption statistics show you the rate at which new users are adopting your system by displaying the rate of adoption for the previous three months and predicting the growth rate over the next three months. Host License statistics display host license usage over the previous three months and expected growth over the next three months.
There is no trial period for Multi-data Center (MDC) licenses; you must obtain MDC licenses before creating an MDC system. You must purchase a minimum of two MDC licenses, one for each data center in the system. (All licenses are installed on the data center hosting the License Manager.)
Using eFulfillment (see Fulfilling Licenses by using eFulfilment).
Using file-based fulfillment (see Fulfilling Licenses by Using the License Manager).
Contacting TAC to open a case for ordering licenses (see Fulfilling Licenses by Contacting TAC).
Refer to the Managing Host Licenses section of Cisco WebEx Meetings Server Administration Guide for more information on managing your licenses.
When you purchase licenses, you use an embedded license manager tool to enter your PAK and register your licenses. License manager performs synchronization every 12 hours to update the license status and last compliance time. If two days pass with no connection to a license manager, an email is sent to your administrator to inform him that a license manager is unable to synchronize with your system. You are given a 180-day grace period to reconnect to a license manager.
A new email is sent to the administrator at the end of each month that the system is unable to connect with license manager to indicate the date when the system will be disabled. If your system reconnects with license manager before the six-month grace period passes, this condition ends.
If your system does not reconnect with license manager within 180 days, your system is set to Maintenance Mode and cannot be enabled until the issue is resolved. The email message informs the administrator of the date when this will occur. When your system is in Maintenance Mode, users are not able to schedule, host, or attend meetings, or access recordings on the system. The Administration site functions normally, so an administrator can sign in to the system, but the system must reconnect with license manager to end this condition and restore the ability for users to schedule, host, attend meetings, and access recordings.
Obtain Host and Multi-data Center (MDC) licenses by using the embedded Cisco Enterprise License Manager:
Contact your sales representative to order Host and Multi-data Center (MDC) licenses for your system. Your sales representative sends you an email that contains your Product Authorization Key (PAK).
Fulfill the license order by entering the Product Authorization Key (PAK) in the license manager without using the web site.
Contact your Cisco sales representative to order Host and Multi-data Center (MDC) licenses for your system. Your sales representative will send you an email that contains your Product Authorization Key (PAK).
eFulfillment requires that a network connection between the system and Cisco Systems, Inc. can be established. Verify that your system is not behind a firewall that does not allow access. If access is not allowed, use file-based fulfillment (see Fulfilling Licenses by Using the License Manager) or contact TAC to open a case for ordering licenses (see Fulfilling Licenses by Contacting TAC.
Obtain your registration ID number. You can find your registration ID number by opening your Enterprise License Management tool and selecting About.
Re-hosting moves Host or MDC licenses on a system that is being joined to an MDC system, upgraded, expanded, or replaced to the surviving system for a limited period of time. If the licenses are not re-hosted, they cannot be upgraded. For example, when a system is upgraded from version 1.5MR3 to version 2.0, Host licenses originally hosted on the 1.5MR3 system can be re-hosted on the 2.0 system for 180 days before they must be replaced by licenses valid for the 2.0 version. If the 1.5 Host licenses running on the 2.0 system are not replaced within 180 days, the system is shut down until the issue of the licenses is resolved. (The only task allowed is adding Host licenses on the system. See Re-hosting Licenses after a Major System Modification.)
If the original system was operating without licenses and within a Trial license period, the remaining number of Host license-free days is transferred to the modified system.
To display the Global Licensing Operations (GLO) request form, select Contact Us on the Product License Registration page (https://tools.cisco.com/SWIFT/LicensingUI/Quickstart). On the GLO Support Contact Information page, select request.
Be prepared to provide the following information:
After a system has been modified as the result of an action, such as an upgrade or expansion, and testing is complete, the next step is to re-host your licenses.
If you have a Multi-data Center (MDC) system and that system has been expanded, you must purchase larger MDC licenses. If it has been upgraded, you have 90 days to upgrade the MDC licenses. Re-hosted licenses are automatically invalidated on the original system. Before you begin the re-host, preserve a license request from the original system in case it is needed to re-host the licenses on the original system due to some error in modifying that system.
When re-hosting licenses, the number of licenses that you can re-host is limited to the number of licenses on the original system. The preferred method of re-hosting licenses is through the Product License Registration portal.
If the original system had Host licenses, the modified system allows you a 180-day period before upgraded Host licenses are required, allowing you time to test the upgraded system before re-hosting the original licenses on the upgraded system. Once the licenses are re-hosted, the trial period ends. Re-hosting can be done by using the Product License Registration Portal at http://tools.cisco.com/SWIFT/LicensingUI/Home. (See Accessing the GLO Request Form.)
To acquire a license request for the original system:
Register the licenses. See Register Licenses to be Re-hosted for instructions.
To use the Product License Registration portal, Log in at https://tools.cisco.com/SWIFT/LicensingUI/Quickstart. You are sent an email containing your re-hosted licenses. Note that if you are doing the re-host as part of a software upgrade, you must re-host (see Re-hosting Licenses after a Major System Modification) and upgrade the old version of the licenses on your upgraded system. An error message, such as You are using an invalid license file with your current deployment might display on the administration site of your upgraded system. This is expected. The message includes an expiration date indicating when your system will be shut down if you do not upgrade the Host licenses before this date. The only task that you can perform after this date is to install licenses.
After re-hosting the licenses, complete the license upgrade before the date shown to assure the uninterrupted use of the system. See Fulfilling Licenses by Using the License Manager for more information.
After a software modification, installed licenses are re-hosted from the original system on the upgraded system. (See Re-hosting Licenses after a Major System Modification for more information.) After the licenses have been re-hosted, they can be upgraded for use on the upgraded system.
The association of users to licenses is deleted. Users are associated with licenses the first time they host a meeting.
To upgrade your Installed licenses by using eFulfilment:
Note | The number of licenses that you can install is limited to the number of licenses available from the upgrade PAK and cannot exceed the number of licenses that were re-hosted from the original system. |
To upgrade the version of your Installed licenses from a license file:
The licenses are updated.