Chapter 13: License Management

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InCenter provides the ability to centrally manage the licenses for multiple nodes. A license is contained in a license file and one or more license files can be uploaded to InCenter. These licenses can then be deployed as needed to one or more nodes that are under InCenter control.

License management in InCenter can be used for both NetShield and NetWall nodes. However, site licensing applies only to NetShield nodes.

There are two kinds of licenses that can be uploaded to InCenter and then deployed to nodes:

Site Licenses

A single site license can be deployed to one or more arbitrary nodes. The site license will allow a fixed level of aggregate throughput for all the nodes which have it.
Node Licenses

A node license is the same as the normal license used for nodes that are not under InCenter control. A single node license is intended for only one specific node and cannot be used with any other nodes.

InCenter license management is divided into the following functions:

License Handling.
License Monitoring.

These topics are discussed separately in the sections that follow.

13.1. License Handling

The license handling function in InCenter deals with the import and storage of licenses, as well as the deployment of licenses to nodes under InCenter control.

In all cases, the commands used are the same for both site licenses and node licenses. The main difference is that a single site license can be deployed to more than one node. A node license can only be used with one specific node.

License Import, Node Association and License Deployment

The process of importing a license, associating it with a node and deployment to that node is done using the following steps:

Upload the license to InCenter

A license file must first be uploaded to the InCenter server using SCP or SFTP. A typical scp utility command to do this on an external management computer might be:
```
> scp my_license.lic admin@196.51.100.10:
```

Create a License object for the license file

In the InCenter CLI, create a License object which points to the uploaded file:

admin@InCenter:/> add License Name=myLicense1
			LicenseData=my_license.lic

A summary of all License objects can be displayed with the license -show command:

admin@InCenter:/> license -show
   Name        Type    Comments
-  ----------  ------  --------
   myLicense1  Node

Associate a license with a node

The License object must now be associated with a node. Assuming that the node my-node1 already exists, the command to create an association would be:
```
admin@InCenter:/> set StandaloneNode my-node1
			Licensed=Yes
			License=myLicense1
```
It should be noted that this does not actually deploy the license but only creates an association with the node.
Activate changes

At this point, an activate command followed by commit should be entered to activate the preceding changes.
Deploy a license to associated nodes

Finally, to deploy a license to all associated nodes, the license command is used:
```
admin@InCenter:/> license -deploy myLicense1
```

If the license file has been uploaded and its License object created, a node could be added and have its license assigned at the same time in the add command.

Switching Between Site and Node Licenses

It is possible to replace one license on a node by simply deploying a new license so the old one is overwritten. The new license that is deployed does not have to be the same type as the old license so that it is possible to easily switch between a node license and a site license.