Managing licenses (cluster administrators only)

A license is a record of one or more software entitlements. Installing license keys, also known as license codes, enables you to use certain features or services on your cluster. ONTAP enables you to manage feature licenses and monitor feature usage and license entitlement risk.

All license keys are 28 characters in length. Licenses installed prior to ONTAP 8.2 continue to work in ONTAP 8.2 and later releases. However, if you need to reinstall a license (for example, you deleted a previously installed license and want to reinstall it in ONTAP 8.2 or later, or you perform a controller replacement procedure for a node in a cluster running ONTAP 8.2 or later), ONTAP requires that you enter the license key in the 28-character format.

You can find license keys for your initial or add-on software orders at the NetApp Support Site under My Support > Software Licenses (login required). If you cannot locate your license keys from the Software Licenses page, contact your sales or support representative.

ONTAP enables you to manage feature licenses in the following ways:

• Add one or more license keys (system license add)
• Display information about installed licenses (system license show)
• Display the packages that require licenses and their current license status on the cluster (system license status show)
• Delete a license from the cluster or a node whose serial number you specify (system license delete)

  The cluster base license is required for the cluster to operate. ONTAP does not enable you to delete it.

• Display or remove expired or unused licenses (system license clean-up)

ONTAP enables you to monitor feature usage and license entitlement risk in the following ways:

• Display a summary of feature usage in the cluster on a per-node basis (system feature-usage show-summary)

  The summary includes counter information such as the number of weeks a feature was in use and the last date and time the feature was used.

• Display feature usage status in the cluster on a per-node and per-week basis (system feature-usage show-history)

  The feature usage status can be not-used, configured, or in-use. If the usage information is not available, the status shows not-available.

• Display the status of license entitlement risk for each license package (system license entitlement-risk show)

  The risk status can be low, medium, high, unlicensed, or unknown. The risk status is also included in the AutoSupport message. License entitlement risk does not apply to the base license package.

  The license entitlement risk is evaluated by using a number of factors, which might include but are not limited to the following:

  • Each package's licensing state
  • The type of each license, its expiry status, and the uniformity of the licenses across the cluster
  • Usage for the features associated with the license package

  If the evaluation process determines that the cluster has a license entitlement risk, the command output also suggests a corrective action.