License Overview

Subscription Licenses

Subscription licenses and renewal licenses (identified by a -R appended to the license name) have a start and end date embedded within them. Customers initially purchase a subscription license that is valid until a specified date. When the license expiration date nears, customers can renew their licenses.

When the license is installed, the start and end date are interpreted relative to the local time and time zone on the machine. The start date begins at 12:00 am and the end date ends at midnight of the end date (12:00 am of the following day). If the start date is in the future, the subscription or renewal license is not activated till the start date. A renewal license is automatically activated only if there is a corresponding expired subscription license.

A subscription license can only be renewed by a corresponding renewal license and a renewal can be activated only by the expiration of a corresponding subscription or renewal license.

The following subscription licenses are available (X and Z will be replaced by the appropriate number of user and/or year count):

•CONSEC-XU-ZYR—Concurrent user count subscription

•POLSEC-XU-ZYR—Concurrent user count subscription

Capacity-Derived Licenses and Client Platform Compatibility

Capacity derived licenses can be leased only to the same platform family.

Non-platform or non-family-specific licenses can be leased to any platform. For example, capacity derived from an ACCESS-1000U-1YR license can be leased to any PCS or PPS gateway.

Cluster Licenses

The license server can lease licenses to both standalone clients and clustered clients. Note the following for leasing licenses to clustered clients:

•Only one cluster member, identified by the Connect Secure or Policy Secure software, makes lease requests on behalf of all cluster members. This member can query, renew, and increment licenses for other cluster members when the members are connected to the cluster.

•In order to lease from platform or platform-family specific perpetual licenses or to surrender installed licenses, each cluster member participating in license leasing must have the LICENSE-MBR license installed. Otherwise, the LICENSE-MBR license is not required.

When setting up the cluster license information, it is not necessary to enter the cluster configuration at the license server. This information is retrieved dynamically as each client reports its own cluster affiliation to the server and is displayed in the license server admin console.

The initial communication between the clusters to the license server retrieves the reserved counts for all cluster members registered with the license server. Incremental requests are the sum of all members in the cluster that are not at their maximum configured capacity.

For example, suppose a cluster has two nodes configured as follows:

•node 1: reserved=50, maximum=100, incremental=10

•node 2: reserved=50, maximum=100, incremental=10

The initial query retrieves 50+50=100 licenses. Each incremental lease request increments the current lease by 10+10=20 licenses up to a maximum of 100+100=200 licenses.