UCS Central Licensing

UCS Central licensing is based on the number of UCS domains that are registered with the server.  UCS Central comes by default with a 120 day grace period license, which can accommodate up to 5 UCS domains for free.  "If you register any domain after the fifth, you get a 120 grace period for each new registered domain."  Once the grace period ends for the domains, you will need an active domain license installed on the server in order to continue managing your UCS environments.  The grace period timer starts on the day you register a UCS domain.  The 120 grace period license days do not need to be used in succession (i.e. - You can register a UCS domain for 20 days, unregister it, and whenever you decide to register it again, it will pick up at the 20 day mark where it left off.)

Types of UCS Central licenses

Initial License: Includes the initial activation license for UCS Central and five domain licenses.  You cannot remove this license is installed on the system. (L-UCS-CTR-INI=)
Domain License: UCS domains that are registered with UCS Central beyond the initial five will each need to have a domain license purchased and installed.  **Domain licenses are domain specific.  Once license is allocated, it can only be used with that particular domain. (L-UCS-CTR-LIC=)

License Installation

In order to install a license in UCS Central, launch the web interface, navigate to Operations Managements -> License Management.  You will notice there is a specific GUID associated with each UCS Central installation (you will need this to obtain the initial license).  You can upload your license to the server by click the Download button within the license tab (it's not so obvious), and browse for the license file you want to install (local and remote options are available):

You can take a peek at the Download Tasks tab to monitor the status of the license file upload.  Licenses that are available for installation will be flagged as "Validated" in the Overall License Status column.  You can select which license you want to install, click Install.  Likewise if you want to delete a license from the system,  you can select it from the list of licenses and select Delete.  Make sure you unregister the UCS domain from UCS Central before deleting the license.  **Note: At present, this licensing structure applies to both UCS Classis and UCS Mini chassis.