When you purchase SteelCentral appliance hardware, all appropriate licenses are assigned to each unit. The build-time license (indicating what type of system the unit is: for example, the Flow Gateway) is installed during the manufacturing process and you cannot change it. Additional licenses (capacity and option licenses) are also generated during the manufacturing process but are not installed directly on the system at that time.

You can retrieve the additional licenses on the Riverbed licensing portal. For example, if you purchase a single Flow Gateway with an F1 capacity license, a license is generated on the Flow Gateway that enables it to support 200,000 fpm. This license is not activated, but it is available to you in the Riverbed licensing portal. The license automatically downloads to the Flow Gateway when the Flow Gateway licenses are synchronized with the portal.

Sometimes you must manually assign licenses to specific hardware. This helps ease the process of installing different models of hardware in different locations.

For example, if you want to deploy 10 Flow Gateways at sites around the world, each site requires a different capacity level. You purchase four F4 Flow Gateways, two F3 Flow Gateways, and four F1 Flow Gateways. If each Flow Gateway is automatically assigned an operational and a capacity license, you must ensure that the appropriate units are shipped to the appropriate destinations. However, with the flexible licensing model, all you have to do is ship a Flow Gateway to each location. When the Flow Gateway is at the location and installed, you can use the licensing portal to assign capacity licenses to the Flow Gateways installed at the other locations. You can deploy different capacity licenses (or option licenses) to different systems without interacting directly with each system prior to deployment.