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Smart Licensing is a cloud-based approach to licensing. Cisco Smart Software Licensing helps you to procure, deploy, and manage licenses easily where devices self-register and report license consumption, removing the need for product activation keys (PAKs). It pools license entitlements in a single account and allows you to move licenses freely through the network, wherever you need them.
You, your chosen partners, and Cisco can view your hardware, software entitlements, and eventually services in the Cisco Smart Software Manager interface.
A Smart Software Licensed product, upon configuration and activation with a single token, will self-register, removing the need to go to a website and register product after product with PAKs. Instead of using PAKs or license files, Smart Software Licensing establishes a pool of software licenses or entitlements that can be used across in a flexible and automated manner. Pooling is particularly helpful with RMAs because it eliminates the need to re-host licenses. You may self manage license deployment easily and quickly in the Cisco Smart Software Manager (CSSM).
Through standard product offers, a standard license platform, and flexible contracts you will have a simplified, more productive experience with Cisco software.
Cisco Smart Software Manager (CSSM) enables you to manage all of your Cisco Smart software licenses from one centralized website. With CSSM, you can organize and view your licenses in groups called virtual accounts. You can use CSSM to transfer the licenses between virtual accounts as needed.
CSSM can be accessed from the Cisco Software Central homepage at software.cisco.com under the Smart Licensing section.
Smart Licensing comes in following modes and you may choose an appropriate based on your security requirements.
Following steps are involved in Smart Licensing:
A Customer Smart Account provides the repository for Smart enabled products and enables Users to manage Cisco Licenses. Once they are deposited, Users can activate licenses, monitor license usage and track Cisco purchases. Your Smart Account can be managed by the Customer directly or a Channel Partner or authorized party. All Customers will need to create a Customer Smart Account to fully utilize the license management features of their smart enabled products. The creation of your Customer Smart Account is a one-time setup activity using Training Resources for Customers, Partners, Distributors, B2B.
You can create your Smart Account and virtual accounts as needed at Cisco Software Central (CSC) https://software.cisco.com/software/company/smartaccounts/home#accountcreation-account using the reference link http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/buy/smart-accounts.html
After the Customer Smart Account Request has been submitted and the Account Domain Identifier has been approved (if edited), the Creator will receive an email notification informing them that they will need to complete the Customer Smart Account setup in the CSC.
The process of purchasing Prime Access Registrar licenses remains the same. Existing and newly-purchased licenses can be migrated to Smart Accounts. For enabling Smart Licensing in Prime Access Registrar and migrating traditional licenses to smart licenses follow the instructions mentioned in the Cisco Prime Access Registrar 8.0 Installation Guide.
After the licenses have been purchased, you must contact the Cisco Global Licensing Operations team by email, using the template as shown below, with appropriate information to request the migration of your license entitlements to the customer's smart portal. Note that this migration may take up to 72 hours. You must continue using right-to-use (RTU) licensing until the license migration is complete.
Subject: Smart License Migration for Wireless Controllers
Request: Migrate the following Prime Access Registrar licenses to smart licensing.
Smart account domain ID (domain in the form of "xyz.com"): <xyz>
Smart virtual account name: <xyz>
Serial numbers of the devices on which the licenses were purchased (for non-adder licenses): <xyz>
Number of adder licenses and SKUs that were purchased: <#>
Virtual accounts are sub accounts that you can create inside your company’s smart account to virtually separate different entities within organization. Virtual account creation is optional. More information regarding virtual accounts can be found in the General Smart Licensing Question and Answers at: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/buy/smart-accounts/software-licensing.html
A token is required to register the Prime Access Registrar product. Registration tokens are stored in the Product Instance Registration Token Table that is associated with your smart account. Once the product is registered, the registration token is no longer necessary and can be revoked and removed from the table. Registration tokens can be valid from 1 to 365 days.
You can create a registration token in the CSSM. Follow the instructions as explained in https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/buy/smart-accounts/software-manager.html.
You must register the token created in Smart Account with Prime Access Registrar as explained below:
1. Register ID from smart account:
Use the following command to register the license using a token ID that was generated in the CSSM system:
Note If you switch from satellite account to smart account, you need to give the call home destination URL of smart account for registration.
2. Register ID from smart satellite account using callhome URL as shown in the example below:
Use the following command to register the license using a token ID that was generated in the CSSM system: