MSE Licenses

Introduction

This document describes various aspects of Mobility Services Engine (MSE) licenses such as the license types, license changes when MSE is upgraded, license installation, and license support per platform.

License Types

The main license types in MSE are:

• Context-Aware (CAS) licenses
• Location Service license
• Wireless Intrusion Prevention System (wIPS ) licenses
• Upgrade license
• Activation license
• Tag license

CAS Licenses

CAS licenses are device endpoint tracking licenses and are defined by the number of elements supported. An element can refer to any of these:

• wireless clients
• rogue clients
• rogue ap
• rfid tags

These CAS licenses are applicable in software releases 7.3 and earlier. In later versions the naming convention and SKUs have been changed.

The license format is AIR-CAS-1KC-K9. Here 'CAS' refers to Context-Aware Service and '1KC' refers to 1000 client count.

Location Services License

With MSE Release 7.4 and later, licenses are access point (AP)-based and not endpoint-based. In order to accommodate this, new location service licenses are introduced.

There are two levels of licenses under Location Services License, Base Location and Advanced Location.

Base Location License

The Base Location License is equivalent to the CAS license in the earlier software versions and is used for endpoint tracking. The license count is based on the number of APs supported.

Note: This is referred to as Location Services License in software release 7.4. In software release 7.5 and later, it is called the Base Location License.

The license format is L-LS-100AP. Here 'LS' refers to Location Services and '100AP' refers to 100 AP count.

Advanced Location License

The Advanced Location License supports some of the new features, such as:

• mobile concierge
• Connected Mobile Experience (CMX) Browser Engage (Billboard)
• service discovery with preauthentication
• CMX analytics

The Advanced Location license also supports the Base Location license features. The Advanced Location services license is used for device tracking and new additional features of the Advanced Location license.

The license format is L-AD-LS-100AP. Here 'AD-LS' refers to Advanced Location services license and '100AP' gives the AP count supported.

Note: On software releases 7.5 and 7.6, the Advanced Location licenses are not enforced. The Advanced Location licenses for CMX are used, software releases 7.5 and 7.6 continue to work with just a Base Location license.

wIPS Licenses

The wIPS licenses have two subtypes, Advanced wIPS and Enhanced Local Mode wIPS. 

Advanced wIPS Licenses

Cisco Adaptive wIPS Monitor Mode software licenses are based on the number of full-time monitoring APs deployed in the network.

The license SKU format is L-MM-WIPS-5. Here 'MM' indicates 'Monitor Mode', 'WIPS' is for wIPS services, and '5' denotes the AP count.

Enhanced Local Mode wIPS License

Cisco wIPS enhanced local mode software licenses are based on the number of local mode (data serving) access points that are deployed in the network. The license SKU format is: L-LM-WIPS-5. Here LM indicates 'Local Mode', 'WIPS' is for wIPS services, and '5' denotes the AP count.

Note: These licenses are additive and the combined sum of both types of licenses should not be more than the wIPS license limit per platform. For example, the 3355 MSE supports up to 3,000 wIPS access points (Monitor Mode or Enhanced Local Mode).

Upgrade License

The Upgrade licenses are used to upgrade from a Base Location license to an Advanced Location license.
The SKU for this license is L-UPG-LS-1AP.

Activation License

The Activation license is needed when the MSE is installed on a virtual machine. There is no need for an Activation license on a physical appliance.

Without an Activation license, the MSE starts in evaluation mode and even if the licenses are present on the host, it rejects the permanent license.

In the case of a MSE High Availability setup, this is the only license needed on the secondary virtual machine (VM).

The Activation license format is L-MSE-7.0-K9.

Tag License

The Tag licenses are specifically used with the Aeroscout tag engine. This is not needed for the Cisco tag engine which consumes the CAS license count. Customers need to purchase the Tag licenses from Cisco to get a Product Authorization Key (PAK). Then, register the PAK with Aeroscout in order to obtain the license key. The license is then installed directly by Aeroscout on MSE and cannot be done through Prime Infrastructure (PI).

The Tag license format is AIR-CAS-12KT-K9. The 'T' here denotes TAG licenses and '12k' refers to 12000 licenses.

Migration from Software Release 7.3 to 7.4 License Changes

There are a few things that need to be kept in mind when you upgrade from software release 7.3 to 7.4 in terms of the MSE license:

• An MSE license is AP-based with MSE software release 7.4 instead of client-based, as it was in software release 7.3 and earlier.
• There is no need to rehost/obtain new licenses in the upgrade process. MSE automatically generates new AP-based licenses.

An example calculation is shown for an MSE 3355 that is upgraded to software release 7.4:
MSE 3355 software release 7.4 supports a total of 25,000 clients. Every 50 client licenses are equal to one AP license, so a 3355 with 25,000 client support will have 500 AP licenses.

Migration from Software Release 7.4 to 7.5 License Changes

Consider again a 3355 for illustration purposes. When an MSE 3355 has the maximum supported AP license limit of 500, which is upgraded to software release 7.5 the license count gets doubled to 1000.

Note: These licenses refer to the Base Location license type and not the Advanced Location license type.

This table illustrates the maximum supported license limit per platform:

*With software version 7.4 the licensing model has been changed from client-based to AP-based. The total clients supported on MSE has also been increased from 18,000 on MSE software release 7.3 to 25,000 on MSE software release 7.4. BL/AL refers to Base Location/Advanced Location.

**With software release 7.6, the total number of wIPS APs supported on MSE 3355 and Standard VM has been increased to 6000 from the prior count of 5000.

Obtain the UDI Information

The UDI information can be collected with this method:
1. Enter the show esludi command at the CLI.
2. On the MSE home page, choose Services > Mobility Services > System > General Properties.

3. On the MSE home page, choose Administration > License Center > Summary > MSE page.

MSE License Installation

From the PI, choose Administration > License Center > Files > MSE Files in order to install an MSE license.

Check the License Usage

Collect the output of the "getserverinfo" from the MSE CLI in order to check the license usage for Location services.

See this sample output:

-------------
Context Aware Service
-------------
Total Active Elements(Wireless Clients, Tags, Rogue APs,
Rogue Clients,Interferers, Wired Clients): 14
Active Wireless Clients: 14
Active Tags: 0
Active Rogue APs: 0
Active Rogue Clients: 0
Active Interferers: 0
Active Wired Clients: 0
Active Elements(Wireless Clients, Rogue APs,
Rogue Clients,Interferers, Wired Clients, Tags) Limit: 100
Active Sessions: 1
Wireless Clients Not Tracked due to the limiting: 6874
Tags Not Tracked due to the limiting: 0
Rogue APs Not Tracked due to the limiting: 1003
Rogue Clients Not Tracked due to the limiting: 43
Interferers Not Tracked due to the limiting: 0
Wired Clients Not Tracked due to the limiting: 0
Total Elements(Wireless Clients, Rogue APs, Rogue Clients,
Interferers, Wired Clients) Not Tracked due to the limiting: 7920

Follow these steps in order to check the wIPS license usage:

1. Log in to the MSE CLI and enter the cd/opt/mse/wips/bin command in order to navigate to the wIPS directory.
2. Enter the ./wips_cli command.
3. When you get into wIPS mode, enter the show ap summary command.