Smart Licensing

You can choose to use traditional licenses that are installed on the Meeting Server deployment, or you can enable Smart Licensing and manage all your licenses via the Cisco Smart Software Manager.

Before you enable Smart Licensing, consider the following:

• You must set up a Smart Account if you do not already have one.

  To set up a Smart Account, go to software.cisco.com, then in the Administration area click Request a Smart Account.

• Optional: Set up a separate Virtual Account for your Meeting Management licenses.

  One Meeting Management deployment can be registered to one Virtual Account. You can have licenses for other products in the same Virtual Account, but you can only have licenses for one specific Meeting Server deployment in one Virtual Account.

• Optional: Set up one Meeting Management deployment for each Meeting Server cluster.

  All licenses are accumulated for the clusters that are connected to your Meeting Management deployment. If you want to keep licenses separate for different clusters, then each cluster must be connected to a separate Meeting Management deployment, and each of these Meeting Management deployments must be connected to a separate Virtual Account.

• If you have set up a resilient Meeting Management deployment, decide which instance of Meeting Management you want to use for license reporting.

  If you register both instances with Smart Licensing, then the Cisco SSM will receive the same license utilization reports twice for the same cluster, and it will determine that you are of compliance when you have used only half of the allocated licenses.

• Determine how Meeting Management should connect to Cisco SSM.

  If you need to set up a Proxy, or you are using Smart Software Manager On-prem (satellite), then you must have address, port number, and certificate available so you can Edit Transport Settings.

  For information on transport settings, see the Smart Licensing information page.

Also, note that there are some limitations:

• Reservation of licenses is not supported by Meeting Management.
• There is no CLI (command line interface) for the Meeting Management Smart Licensing integration. This is by design as Meeting Management provides a graphical user interface.
• Smart Licensing lets you know if you are in compliance or not. Unlike the traditional license reporting, it does not differentiate between short peaks and long term overuse.
• Smart Licensing does not report back to Meeting Management how many licenses have been allocated to the Virtual Account it is using. You must enter the number of licenses manually to see utilization in percentage.
• Smart Licensing does not work if at least one connected Meeting Server cluster is running Meeting Server version 2.5 or older.
• In this release, Smart Licensing works only for usage licenses (Recording, Streaming, SMP plus, PMP plus). You still need traditional activation licenses installed for a Meeting Server deployment to work.
• Smart Licensing cannot activate your deployment for evaluation. You must install traditional license (activation keys) for the Meeting Server deployment to work.

To enable Smart Licensing:

1. Sign in to the Cisco SSM and generate a registration token.
2. Copy the token to your clipboard.
3. Open the instance of Meeting Management that you want to use for license reporting.
4. Go to the Settings page, Smart Software Licensing tab.

5. Click Enable.

   Note: Evaluation mode is not implemented for this release, so you cannot use Smart Licensing to activate your Meeting Servers. You must install traditional licenses on the Meeting Servers for them to work. Evaluation mode will still work in the sense that Meeting Management does not send usage information to the Cisco Smart Software Manager while the deployment is in evaluation mode.

6. Click the Register button.
7. Paste the registration token.

8. Optional: Register this product instance if it is already registered

   Usually Cisco SSM will not let you register an instance of Meeting Management that is already registered. If you check this check box, then Cisco SSM will let you register the same instance again. This is useful if your Meeting Management has lost the registration details, for instance if you have tried to deregister and Meeting Management could not reach Cisco Smart Software Manager while deregistering.

9. Click Register.

To see utilization data on the Licenses page:

1. In the License summary table, enter the number of licenses allocated for this cluster in the Available for reporting column.

   Note: This is for you to see more details than what will be available in the Cisco Smart Software Manager. The details that you see in Meeting Management are not reported back to the Cisco SSM.

Actions after you have registered

You can do the following:

• Renew Authorization Now: The system automatically renews your authorization daily, at midnight UTC. However, if you want to renew manually, you can do that here. This is useful if you have purchased new licenses or allocated more licenses to the Virtual Account for this Meeting Management, and you want to see the changes in Meeting Management immediately.
• Renew Registration Now: The system automatically renews your registration every 6 months. You may want to renew the registration manually if you have moved licenses to or from the Virtual Account for this Meeting Management.
• Reregister: You can reregister manually if you want to use different Virtual Account with this instance of Meeting Management.

• Deregister: You can deregister this instance of Meeting Management if you want to use the Virtual Account for another deployment, or if you have a resilient Meeting Management deployment and want to use the other instance for reporting.

  Note: If you have lost connection to an instance of Meeting Management then you can also deregister from the Cisco SSM.

• Disable and deregister: You can disable Smart Licensing for Meeting Management and at the same time deregister this instance. Choose to only deregister if you want to go back to evaluation mode. Chose Disable and deregister if you want to stop using Smart Licensing for this Meeting Management.