Licensing
You have two options for licensing: unified switching licenses or Cisco DNA licenses. The details for each licensing model are as follows.
Unified licensing with the Cisco Networking Subscription
The Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series is eligible for unified licensing through the Cisco Networking Subscription and Cisco Enterprise Agreement.
The Cisco Networking Subscription provides a consistent way to purchase and manage eligible Cisco networking software, hardware support, services, and platform capabilities. It offers customers the flexibility to:
- Align renewal dates with business and budget requirements
- Add licenses to an existing subscription while maintaining a common renewal date
- Upgrade license entitlements during the subscription term or at renewal
- Include both Essentials and Advantage licenses in the same subscription
- Choose cloud-based or on-premises license management and deployment options, where supported
A new Cisco Networking Subscription with switching licenses has a standard minimum term of 36 months.
There is one available switching license tier for the Catalyst 9600 Series:
- Cisco Switching Advantage
Cisco Switching Advantage includes the Essentials capabilities and adds advanced automation, analytics, segmentation, assurance, security, application visibility, and fabric-management capabilities.
For a complete list of license features, see the Cisco Switching Licensing Feature Matrix.
Unified licensing support is available for the following releases: 26.2.1, 17.18.5, and 26.1.3.
Cisco DNA licensing
Cisco DNA subscriptions for the Catalyst 9600 Series are offered in the Advantage tier with 3-, 5-, or 7-year terms. The Cisco DNA Advantage tier corresponds with the Network Advantage license.
- Cisco DNA Advantage adds advanced assurance, analytics, policy-based automation, segmentation, and application-visibility capabilities.
As part of the Cisco DNA Advantage license, the Catalyst 9600 Series supports the following perpetual network license tier:
Network Advantage provides foundational Layer 2 and Layer 3 switching, automation, visibility, and security capabilities, along with advanced routing, segmentation, multicast, scale, and security capabilities.
Introduction to Smart Licensing
Cisco Smart Licensing is a flexible licensing model that provides you with an easier, faster, and more consistent way to purchase and manage software across the Cisco portfolio and across your organization. And it’s secure— you control what users can access. With Smart Licensing you get:
- Easy activation: Smart Licensing establishes a pool of software licenses that can be used across the entire organization—no more PAKs (product activation keys).
- Unified management: My Cisco Entitlements provides a complete view into all of your Cisco products and services in an easy-to-use portal, so you always know what you have and what you are using.
- License flexibility: Your software is not node-locked to your hardware, so you can easily use, and transfer licenses as needed.
To use Smart Licensing, you must first set up a Smart Account on Cisco Software Central (software.cisco.com).
For a more detailed overview of Cisco Licensing, go to cisco.com/go/licensingguide.
Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series switches run on Cisco IOS XE Release 16.9.2 or later.
Managing licenses with Smart Accounts
Creating Smart Accounts by using the Cisco Smart Software Manager (SSM) enables you to order devices and licensing packages and also manage your software licenses from a centralized website. You can set up Cisco SSM to receive daily email alerts and to be notified of expiring add-on licenses that you want to renew.
You must order an add-on license in order to purchase a switch. When the license term expires, you can either renew the add-on license to continue using it or deactivate the add-on license and then reload the switch to continue operating with the base license capabilities.
Both the base and add-on licenses are also available for a 90-day evaluation period. An evaluation license is activated temporarily, without purchase. An expired evaluation license cannot be reactivated after reload.
Note: You are not required to deploy Cisco Catalyst Center, just to use one of the above packages.