About Licenses, Upgrades, and Image Signing

The Flex license is mostly tied to the bandwidth limit placed on the appliance. In order to optimize more bandwidth, a higher license type must be obtained. For details, see the product family spec sheet.

Legacy versions of Riverbed products use a common licensing management framework (CLMF) to obtain, apply, and manage license keys.

A license key is a string of characters issued by Riverbed that embeds information that ties the license to data to prevent tampering. After you install the license, the system saves it in the configuration database and enables the functionality associated with the license. Riverbed employs the following licensing methods:

• Automatic—Once you connect your appliance to the network, it automatically contacts the Riverbed Licensing Portal, which downloads and installs the licenses.

• Manual—You can manually fetch and activate licenses for Riverbed products using the Riverbed Licensing Portal. Go to https://licensing.riverbed.com/index.htm and follow the instructions to retrieve license keys. After you manually retrieve your license keys, you need to install them on the appropriate appliance.

• Customer key—You use your customer key to activate Riverbed software. This method applies only to virtual products. When you purchase your first virtual Riverbed product, you are given a customer key. When you need to apply licenses, you use your customer key to validate the license keys.

• Air-gapped—You license air-gapped products through a challenge-response process. After you receive your keys through email or the Riverbed license server, you log in to the air-gapped product’s management console and generate a challenge. Then, on a different system that is connected to the internet, you log in to the Riverbed Licensing Portal and enter the challenge. After successfully submitting the challenge, you are provided with a response, which you apply to the air-gapped product to validate your license keys.

Automatic licensing enables products with access to the internet to automatically contact the Riverbed Licensing Portal and install available license keys. Automatic licensing simplifies inventory management and provides an automated mechanism of fetching licenses for Riverbed products without having to manually activate individual appliances and licenses. Automatic licensing also works over a web proxy.

If you are behind a firewall, you can retrieve licenses at the Riverbed Licensing Portal using the email option or by downloading an XML file to a Controller appliance.

After a product successfully completes automatic licensing, the Management Console Licensing page displays a success message. If automatic licensing is unsuccessful, the Alarm Status page reports an actionable error message.

For automatic license renewals, the product contacts the portal and downloads the new licenses. You do not need to delete the expired license. The system uses the license with the latest expiration date.

Licenses can be fetched on demand, but only administrators can do this. To fetch a license on demand, display the Management Console Licenses page, and then click Fetch Updates Now.

For manual and token methods, you can retrieve and manage Riverbed licenses using the Riverbed Licensing Portal. After you retrieve a license from the portal, you need to add it in your product.

The Riverbed Licensing Portal is located at https://licensing.riverbed.com/index.htm.

The portal requires a unique product identifier to retrieve a license. Depending on the product, the identifier can be a serial number, license request key (activation code), customer key, or token. The steps to retrieve a license vary based on the product identifier. Online instructions guide you through the process. The portal displays license information for all purchased products associated with the unique identifier.

Serial numbers are on a label located on your appliance and also appear in the Support tab of the Management Console. Customer keys are typically provided through email, or directly from your Riverbed representative.

To retrieve your licenses from the Riverbed Licensing Portal, go to the portal and follow the instructions there.

Each license key is generated for a specific appliance. Ensure that you install licenses on the appropriate appliance. You can enter multiple licenses by separating them with a space, tab, or line return.

These procedures offer general guidance. Exact steps vary slightly across products. For most products, the Licenses page is in the Administration section of the Management Console.

For details about CLI commands, see the Riverbed Command-Line Interface Reference Guide.

The command for installing licenses under the Riverbed Common Licensing Management Framework (CLMF) is license clmf install <license-key>.

The Software Upgrade page of the management console enables you to perform these software management activities:

• View current and backup software versions, and switch from the currently running software version to the backup software version. See Switching to the backup software version.

For Controller appliances, such as the SteelHead Mobile Controller and SteelHead Central Controller, upgrading may update some policies. After the upgrade is complete, the optimization service on managed devices might automatically restart.

For most products, the Software Upgrade page is in the Administration section of the Management Console.

Riverbed software images are now digitally signed, ensuring the integrity and authenticity of the image. Verifying an image is performed by comparing a public key, or image signing certificate, with the image signature. For details, including a copy of the public key and intermediate certificate, go to Knowledge Base article S33657.

Image verification is enabled by default. We strongly recommend that it remain enabled at all times. Disable this feature only when absolutely necessary.

The feature requires a public key in a certificate to verify the digital signature of the software image. The certificate is automatically installed on the appliance, but you can import an updated version, if needed. During the verification process, the appliance compares the signature in the image with the Riverbed public certificate. If they match, the installation continues. If not, the system alerts you to a potential problem. As long as image signature verification is enabled, you cannot continue with an installation that cannot verify the image signature.

Enable Image Signature Verification. If you clear the Image Signing Verification check box, you disable this feature and a warning message appears indicating images will not be verified.

Ensure the appliance has a valid certificate. You can use the certificate that is installed by default, or you can upload a PKCS #12, PEM, or DER format certificate or copy and paste a PEM certificate.

To find allowed upgrades between software versions and recommended upgrade paths, use the software upgrade tool for your product on the Riverbed Support site. The tool includes all of the recommended intermediate versions.

Software images can be quite large; uploading the image to the appliance and installing it can take several minutes. After the installation is complete, you’ll need to restart the appliance to switch to the new version of the software and complete the upgrade process. Restarting can take a few minutes.

After the upgrade is complete, the Dashboard, Software Upgrade, and Help pages of the Management Console display the new software version.

The following sections describe different methods to upload and install software upgrade packages.

Specify the URL. Any of these URL formats are valid:

Download an image directly from the Riverbed Support site to the appliance or the appliance host. Select the target release number from the drop-down list. The system uploads and installs the new image immediately after you initiate the installation.

Optionally, schedule another date or time before you initiate the installation.

Browse to the file using your system file browser and install it; or, optionally, schedule the upgrade for a later time. Remember, you’ll need to restart the appliance after the installation completes.