Avi Vantage License Management

Overview

Avi Vantage software requires a license. This article lists the Avi Vantage license types and describes how to obtain, add, and manage them.
The license types mentioned in this article are applicable to the releases prior to Avi Vantage 20.1.1. Starting with Avi Vantage release 20.1.1, the licensing model for Avi Vantage has changed. For more information on the latest license types, refer to Avi Vantage License Management. The license types mentioned in this article apply to the releases prior to Avi Vantage 20.1.1.

License Types

License Type	Description
vCPU	Counts the total number of vCPUs across all Service Engines Applicable primarily to virtualized environments Also supported on bare-metal and container environments
Socket (<=14 cores/socket)	Counts the total number of sockets that Service Engines are being run on Applicable towards bare-metal deployments where the Avi SE is running on the entire physical server
High-Core Socket (>= 16 cores/socket)	Counts the total number of sockets that Service Engines are being run on Applicable towards bare-metal deployments where the Avi SE is running on the entire physical server
Container-Core	Counts the total number of cores in the container cluster Applicable primarily to virtualized environments Applicable when Service Engines are deployed for east-west load balancing
Bandwidth-limited Service Engine	Counts the total number of Service Engines of a specified bandwidth Available in 25-Mbps, 200-Mbps and 1-Gbps options 25-Mbps and 200-Mbps options are applicable in any environment 1-Gbps option applicable for public cloud only
SaaS Unit	Number of Avi SaaS units needed in the Avi SaaS instance to support required number of Service Engines and application instances

License Duration

NSX Advanced Load Balancer is available in the following license types based on the duration for which the license is valid:

License Type	Description
Term	Available for 1 year and 3 year pre-paid terms Has all the features such as load balancing, GSLB, WAF, and more No features related to Cloud Services (Cloud Services features such as Centralized Licensing are available in Subscription SKUs only) Support Included
Perpetual	Perpetual License with features like Term Also needs additional per-year Support and Subscription (SnS) Note: Perpetual SKUs have been decommissioned in December 2021, and are no longer available for purchase.
Subscription	Available for 1-year and 3-year pre-paid terms Includes all features as well as the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Cloud Services features (such as Centralized Licensing) Includes Support

Obtaining an Avi Vantage License

Avi Vantage licenses can be downloaded by authorized persons from the Avi Networks customer portal or obtained by contacting the Avi sales team.

To activate a license, you must first add the license to the Avi Controller.

Adding a New License

You can add a new license using one of the following options:

Option 1 — VMware Serial Key

You can activate the license by manually entering VMware serial key provided.

After adding 25-character VMware serial key, the system will display the information about the license, such as start date, expiry date, resource count, and so on, available in the Avi Controller’s license list.

Option 2 — Avi Vantage License File

After obtaining a license from Avi Networks, you can activate the license by adding it to the Avi Controller.

Log on to the web interface and navigate to Administration > Settings > Licensing.
Click on Upload from Computer and navigate to the file.
After the license file is uploaded, the new license appears in the Avi Controller's license list. The system displays the information about the license, including the start date and expiration date.

Note: This method of license addition will be gradually deprecated. Also, Enterprise 16 license files are deprecated, however, existing Enterprise 16 license files will be treated on par with Enterprise 18.

Updating an Existing License

Updating an existing license follows the same process as adding a new license. When a license file has the same license ID (with updated limit and/or expiration date), uploading this license file will update the existing entry in place.

Checking License Usage

To check license usage information, navigate to Administration > Settings > Licensing. The system displays the license limits and current usage.

The above screenshot displays the License Summary and Default License Tier sections of Administration > Settings > Licensing. The various columns display the current usage and maxima stats for various enterprise licensing tiers. The various license types are listed in the first column:

SE Bandwidth N Gbps — Bandwidth limited to the indicated N per Service Engine
Service Engine vCPUs — Total number of SEs for core-based licensing
Service Engine Sockets — Total number of SE sockets for socket-based licensing

Use the Default License Tier pulldown menu to specify which of several tiers should be the default when creating new clouds.

Sizing Recommendations For Azure Pay-as-you-go (Azure PAYG)

For the PAYG licenses, the following are the recommended sizes for an Avi SE:

License Unit	Maximum vCPU Allowed for Service Engine	Recommended VM Sizes	Other Allowed VM Sizes
25M	2	F2s_V2, DS2_v3	Any VM <= 2 vCPUs
200M	4	F4s_v2, DS4_v3	Any VM <= 4 vCPUs
1 G	8	F8s_v2, DS8_v3	Any VM <= 8 vCPUs

Reaching the License Limit

When a license limit is reached, you can neither create nor register new Avi SEs with the Avi Controller. However, you can use the existing Service Engines for existing or new virtual services.

In the case of container cloud environments, after the license limit has been reached, you cannot create new SEs even if you add new hosts to the cluster. Any new tasks or containers created on new container hosts may have degraded access to the existing load-balanced applications, since SEs are not present on those hosts.

License Expiration

If multiple licenses are attached to Avi Vantage and one of the licenses expire, the system immediately prevents the capacity from exceeding the total resources allotted by the remaining valid licenses.

When all applied licenses expire, Avi Vantage returns to an unlicensed state. In the unlicensed state,

There is no impact to existing virtual services.
You can not create new Service Engines.
You can still create and edit virtual services and other load-balancing configurations.
The system defaults to the free perpetual limits.
As soon as a valid license is reapplied, the system will immediately be able to utilize the total resources allocated by the new license.

License Expiry Events

Avi Vantage automatically generates a LICENSE_EXPIRED event once every day starting one month before expiry.

The events are included in the events table. Navigate to Operations > Events. Search for license_expiry, and then click on + sign at the right of the row to reveal the details of the particular event.

License Expiry Alerts

Optionally, you can configure Avi Vantage to generate license-expiration alerts. Based on the alert configuration, the alerts are triggered by license expiration events and are defined as you prefer, namely, emails, syslog messages, SNMP traps, and/or ControlScript executions.

Throughput of Service Engines

For a 25M SKU, (25M + 5M grace) * 5 = 150 M is allowed over a 5 second period. This means that you can burst upto 150M in t=1 second. Using this limit, traffic will be dropped for t=2 through 5s. This provides an average rate of 30M (with a grace of 5M over the stated 25M limit).

Additional Information

Following are the observation when the bandwidth license expires on Avi Vantage:

New object creation (SEs, virtual services, etc.) is restricted.
Existing SEs continue to enforce the same bandwidth limits. The existing SEs do not go to reduced limits.