Product Licensing#

As part of the VOSS Automate 21.4 release, license enforcement will be enabled on all Automate deployments, including production and lab environments. This will result in the requirement for license keys to be obtained and installed on all platforms (within 7 days from the date of upgrade) to ensure no service disruptions are experienced.

Note

For an overview of licensing and functionality available in the GUI, refer to the Product License Management topic in the Core Feature Guide.
When a license has expired, GUI login is not available. Log in on the platform CLI and update a license as indicated below.
Customers can use an upgraded or installed platform for a grace period of 7 days in order to license the system.

The Licensing Service

A license service is installed during installation/upgrade from release 21.4 onwards.

Run app status to verify the presence and status of the license-service application, for example:

platform@VOSS:~$ app status
selfservice v21.4.0 (2022-12-03 15:16)
   |-node                  running
snmp v21.4.0 (2022-12-03 15:23)
   |-daemon                running (completed)
   |-traps                 running (completed)
license-service v21.4.0 (2022-12-03 15:11)
   |-license-service       running
cluster v21.4.0 (2022-12-03 15:21)
template_runner v21.4.0 (2022-12-03 15:23)
[...]

Note

An hourly schedule is run for VOSS Automate to process license service information.
The license-service cannot be stopped by running a command from the command line.

The CLI login screen also shows license information from 120 days before expiry.

The message levels are according to remaining number of days on the license, as follows:

INFO: 90 < remaining days <= 120
WARNING: 0 < remaining days <= 90
ERROR: 0 >= remaining days

Refer to the Product License Management topic in the Core Feature Guide for GUI Alerts intervals.

Otherwise, no information is displayed on login. The license list command can however be used to inspect the license status. See: Login Report.

Note

License commands and status messages are only available on:
- unified nodes in a Unified Node Topology
- application nodes in a Modular Cluster Topology

Loading a License on the CLI

Obtain the license token from VOSS.
Log in on the platform CLI.
If required, the token can be copied to a file and uploaded to the /media directory.

Otherwise, have the token available in the copy buffer.
1. If copied to a file, use the command below to add the token file - using the file parameter:
```
license add file media/<token_file>
```
2. If copied to the copy buffer, use the command below to paste the token - using the token parameter:
```
license add token [<token string>]
```
For VOSS Automate to process any changed licensing status or updated license token, use the command:
```
voss check-license
```
To view the currently loaded license token information, use the command:
```
license list
```

Check License Details

At any stage, the details of license tokens can be viewed.

Use the license list command, for example:

platform@VOSS:~$ license list
    6009914029c384002787ef2e:
        Audience: Automate
        Expired: false
        Expiry: 2022-11-07T10:20:09Z
        Platform Description: N/A
        Token ID: d2ba2d70-fc84-47af-a57e-5cb9c39878d8

Refresh License

A command is available to verify a VOSS Automate license status, for example, after updating the license token.

The command: voss check-license uses the running license-service application information to refresh the license information of the VOSS Automate deployment.

For example, if the command is run from the CLI:

platform@VOSS:~$ voss check-license
Current license status "Licensed" remains unchanged.
Status was set on 2022-11-01T13:46:07

then the time of that command will update the License Last Checked time stamp on the Manage License GUI form (accessible by the sysadmin user) to that time. In this example, the system was already licensed and this check reflects this license status as “unchanged”.

Renewing a License

When a license has expired, contact VOSS to renew the license. Provide the platform ID (UUID) which is shown when running license list.