NX-OS Licensing

Obtaining a License

What You Need

• Claim certificate or PAK number

• Serial number of the chassis to which the license will be applied. This can be obtained by issuing the following command:

  show license host-id

Fulfilment Process

• Log into the licensing portal.
• Go to License Administration Portal / Product License Registration.
• Click Get New Licenses From a PAK or Token and enter the Product Authorization Key on the Claim Certificate.
• Click Fulfill Single PAK / Token.
• Check the box in the column Quantity Available.
• Enter the chassis' serial number in the Serial Number field.
• Click the Assign button.
• Click Next.
• Check the I agree with the Terms of the License box.
• Click Get License.
• The license will be emailed to the account to which the Cisco account is associated. The license will also be available for download on the confirmation page.

Applying a License

• Unzip the downloaded file and SCP the .lic file into the bootflash. Make sure the correct license file has been uploaded as the serial number is hard-coded into the license file.
• Issue the command install license bootflash:///[name_of_file].lic.
• Verify the license installation with the command show license.

License Grace Period

If a device is not yet licensed for a feature that needs to be enabled immediately, all features can be unlocked for 120 days by issuing the following command:

license grace-period

It is important to note that this command can only be issued a single time per chassis (it is tracked in hardware). After that, evaluation licenses will need to be requested on a case-by-case basis.