This section describes how to install, update, and remove a license. It also describes how to use flexible licensing to manage configurations and upgrades. This section includes these topics:

You perform all license management and SteelHead model upgrades in the Appliance > Licenses page.

SteelHead licenses can be permanent or temporary. Permanent licenses don’t display an expiration date in their Status column on the Licenses page; temporary licenses display an expiration date in their Status column. For example, evaluation licenses typically expire in 60 days and display a date within that range.

The system warns you two weeks before a license expires with the Expiring License alarm. After a license expires, the system warns with an Expired License alarm. You can add a license to extend the functionality of an expiring licenses. If multiple licenses exist for a feature, the system uses the license with the latest expiration date.

RiOS provides a flexible way to manage SteelHead licenses, model configurations, feature capabilities, and upgrades. Depending on the model of SteelHead, you follow one of these flexible licensing approaches:

Feature-tier licensing is available on SteelHead CX models 580, 780, and 3080 and SteelHead-v models VCX30 through VCX110. Feature-tier licensing is not available for models VCX10 and VCX20.

Feature-tier licensing determines SteelHead appliance capabilities by feature categories. This licensing model provides three licensing tiers: Essentials, Standard, and Enterprise. The following table lists the features in each license tier.

With feature-tier licensing, all license categories get the same specified number of connections and bandwidth capacity. The amount doesn’t change between licenses. (See the SteelHead Family Specification Sheet for these limits for your appliance.)

You can upgrade from Essentials to Standard and from Standard to Enterprise. For details, see Upgrading an appliance feature tier.

With feature-tier licensing, you can configure some functionality even if it is not licensed, but you cannot use that functionality until it is both licensed and enabled. Features and protocols that are not licensed display an alert on their configuration page in the user interface.

Any connections configured to use unlicensed capabilities will be passed through.

Feature-tier licensing only ships with SteelHead CX models 580, 780, and 3080. All other appliances maintain their existing licensing when communicating with feature-tier licensed appliances.

Dual-ended capabilities require a valid license at both peers and when two systems pair from different feature tiers or from different licensing models, only the smaller subset of features is allowed. For example, an Essentials client cannot optimize SMB/CIFS traffic, even if the server-side appliance has an Enterprise license. The opposite is true as well: If an Enterprise client communicates with an Essentials tier, only features in the Essentials tier will work.

SteelHead models that have specification licensing include the features in the Enterprise feature-license tier except SCPS and FIPS that each require a separate license on x70 and xx70 appliances. For details, see Feature-tier licensing and the SCPS and FIPS documentation.

RiOS provides specification licenses that configure specific performance characteristics of an appliance, such as bandwidth capacity and number of optimized connections. A specification license points to a specific, validated model and includes the required license and the hardware specification.

By activating a specification license on an appliance, you can transform the capabilities of the appliance to meet performance characteristics for any model within a platform family.

If a model upgrade requires additional hardware, the specification license determines which hardware is necessary to complete the upgrade. To upgrade, order a hardware kit that contains the additional hardware from Riverbed Support or Sales. For more information, see the Upgrade and Maintenance Guide.

SteelHead models that have specification licensing include the features in the Enterprise feature-license tier except SCPS and FIPS that each require a separate license on x70 and xx70 appliances. For details, see Feature-tier licensing and the SCPS and FIPS documentation.

This table shows the appliances with specification licensing and their upgrade possibilities.

For details about hardware specifications that require hardware upgrades, see the Upgrade and Maintenance Guide.

This table describes where to find more information on flexible licensing tasks.

Although the types of flexible licenses differ between models, you follow the same steps to install, update, and remove licenses.

This section describes how to request a license from the Riverbed license portal or install a license manually after receiving it from Riverbed Support or Sales.

The SteelHead automatically contacts the Riverbed license portal and downloads the licenses. The Licensing page displays a success message or the Alarm Status page reports an actionable error message.

After installing most new licenses, you must restart the optimization service. Consult the feature description for details.

At the time of the next scheduled automatic license fetch, the SteelHead automatically contacts the Riverbed license portal and downloads the new licenses. The Licensing page displays a success message or the alarm Status page reports an actionable error message.

The Licensing page displays a success message or the alarm Status page reports an actionable error message.

For appliances with feature-tier licensing, you can upgrade from Essentials to Standard and from Standard to Enterprise. This section describes how to upgrade an appliance feature tier.

When the upgrade is installed, the new feature set is available.

You can use a hardware specification license to upgrade some SteelHead models. Some model upgrades require additional hardware. When the appliance has the required hardware, activating the hardware specification upgrades the appliance to the new model number. When the existing hardware isn’t adequate, a hardware required message appears after the hardware specification description.

This section describes how to upgrade an appliance model.

When the upgrade is complete, the appliance is transformed into the new model. The model number appears on the appliance banner in the upper-right corner of the page. The appliance retains its original serial number.

For more details, see the Upgrade and Maintenance Guide.

We recommend that you keep old licenses in case you want to downgrade to an earlier software version; however, in some situations you might want to remove a license.