Understanding Platform Limits, Licensing Limits and Effective Limits
- Aliaksei Shautsou (Deactivated)
- Olga Nekrutkina
The Settings Summary provides a series of Device Limits counters that can be used to clearly understand when NetMRI licensing is fully utilized for a given physical appliance. This information helps you decide when network discovery and management might need to be distributed to other appliances, and when you can increase your license allocations on a NetMRI appliance to manage more network infrastructure devices.
Three key values must be kept in mind for all NetMRI device capacities and device management limits: Platform limits, Licensed limits, and Effective limits.
Platform Limit: The highest number of network infrastructure devices that can be fully managed by NetMRI. NetMRI can discover a much larger number of infrastructure devices than are called for in the Platform limit. The Platform limit denotes the expected maximum number of infrastructure devices that may be fully managed by the NetMRI physical appliance.
Licensed Limit: The number of infrastructure devices that NetMRI is specifically entitled to manage through a purchased device license. If a manager wants to manage up to 500 infrastructure devices, they purchase a 500-device license. This value appears in the Licensed Device Limit fields in the Settings Summary page.
Effective Limit: The current number of infrastructure devices manageable by NetMRI. This value usually, but not always, is the same as the Licensed limit.
The Limit categories are applied against the License type installed in your appliance. The license types (Full NetMRI or Automation Change Management (ACM)), appear in the Settings Summary page listed for each separate license type. (See NetMRI Licensing for information on each licensing type.)
Note: Values of this type are reported for physical NetMRI appliances and do not apply to virtual-machine-based NetMRI instances.
The possible values that appear in the Settings Summary page's NetMRI Configuration section, depending on installed licenses, include the following:
Platform <NetMRI|ACM> Device Limit | The appliance's maximum possible managed infrastructure device capacity, based upon the Full NetMRI license type. Managed devices allow the carrying out of operations such as configuration collection and changes, change management, policy compliance, and other operations. The license type, which may be one of three choices (full NetMRI or Automation Change Manager (ACM)), provides the same three license capacity counts for any of the three licenses. | |
Licensed <NetMRI|ACM> Device Limit | The appliance's current device license entitlement limit - the maximum number of managed devices by the Full NetMRI, Automation Change Manager (ACM) feature license. This value changes according to the total number of purchased device licenses. In most cases, the Licensed limit will be lower than the Platform limit. | |
Effective <NetMRI|ACM> Device Limit | The current number of network devices that NetMRI is able to manage. In all cases where the Licensed limit is less than or equal to the Platform limit, the Effective limit is set to the same value as the Licensed limit. | |
Platform SPM End Host Limit | The maximum number of End Host devices under Switch Port Management that can be discovered by NetMRI without displaying a Number of devices <count> exceeds SPM End Host Limit of <limit> warning message. This number is not related to Platform Device Limits, Licensed Device Limits, or Effective Device Limits. A warning alert appears when the number of discovered end hosts exceeds this limit, but system functionality remains unaffected. | |
Platform Total Device Limit | The maximum number of network infrastructure devices that can be discovered and listed in NetMRI's Discovery table without displaying a Number of devices <count> exceeds Platform Total Device Limit of <limit> warning. This number is not related to Platform Device Limits, Licensed Device Limits, or Effective Device Limits. A warning alert appears when the number of discovered devices exceeds this limit, but system functionality remains unaffected. | |
Platform Interface Limit | The maximum number of device interfaces that can be discovered by NetMRI without displaying a Number of interfaces <count> exceeds Platform Interface Limit of <limit> warning. The warning alert appears when the number of discovered interfaces exceeds this limit, but system functionality remains unaffected. |
Upgraded NetMRI Appliances and Platform Limits
Some NetMRI appliances may have relatively high device license limits, which are previously sold entitlements to manage a large quantity of network infrastructure devices. If a user then upgrades their system to the NetMRI Release
6.8 or higher, their installed License may exceed the Platform Limit for the NetMRI or Automation Change Manager feature license. This event is called overriding the Platform Limit. This does not affect the appliance or its operation. After the upgrade installation, whether it is browser-based or performed in the command line, the following message appears:
The number of Licensed Devices in this License exceeds the capacity of this appliance for <managed devices>. The platform limit of <# platform capacity of managed devices> will be overridden with the [new license limit | existing limit] (<# new limit>). Please contact customer support if you feel this message is in error.
In such cases, the Effective limit exceeds the Platform limit for the given feature license. A Platform Overridden message, in red, appears in the Settings Summary page. The user can use all originally purchased device license entitlements.
Note: A warning banner appears on the NetMRI screen only when the number of discovered end hosts, discovered devices or discovered interfaces exceeds the Total Device Limit of the system.
Operations Center Device Limits
NetMRI Platform limits, Licensed limits, and Effective limits apply to all Collector appliances and instances in an Operations Center. On the Operations Center, the Settings icon –> Setup –> Tunnels and Collectors page separately lists each Collector's status and their associated device limits. For more information, see Checking NetMRI Collectors Operation.
Enforcing Platform Limits
Platform limits have another aspect. For all hardware platforms, if an administrator attempts to install a device license that exceeds the Platform NetMRI Device Limit value as reflected in Settings Summary (or the Platform Limit that applies to any of their feature licenses), NetMRI disallows the installation of device licenses beyond that limit. The Effective device limit will match the Platform device limit, while the Licensed device limit remains higher than both, reflecting the purchased license level. You will not be able to use more device licenses than the Platform limit; the remainder will be unused. A Platform Limited message, in red, appears in the Settings Summary page.
If this is the case for your system, contact Customer Support.
As noted above, an upgraded NetMRI system that has a pre-existing Device License limit that is higher than the Platform limit will preserve the license limit, simply displaying a warning that the existing limit will override the Platform limit. This is not true, however, if you want to install a newly purchased device license that will exceed the Platform limit onto a NetMRI appliance.