Forum Discussion
AltostratusF5 rSeries appliance firmware upgrade question
CirrusI agree that license reactivation is not required for all upgrade. I do not update the license every time I upgrade a lab device.
The Service Check Date is used to verify that the device is covered by a active support contract. My clients renew their support contracts every year. The license should be reactivated at least once a year. Upgrades are a good time to reactivated the license.
I have had multiple clients only able to upgrade TMOS once every 18 months. My personal best practice to reactive the license during every update is due to more than a year between upgrades.
I believe the Service Check Date has to to fall within a date range based on the TMOS version's release date.
The license file has a version number. Occasionally a newer version of TMOS requires the license version number to be incremented. The license file has to be reactivated or updated when the license version is incremented.
- Quiroman81
Hi Matt,
Agreed on the practice - reactivating before an upgrade costs nothing. I would only split two fields that tend to get merged, because it changes what is actually enforced.
Service Check Date is a stamp inside the license file: K7727 defines it as "the date the license was last activated or the date the service contract for the device expires, whichever date is earlier". License Check Date is a different value - static, compiled into each major/minor release, readable in /etc/version_date and published by F5 as a per-version table in K7727 - https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K7727
The upgrade only compares those two: the Service Check Date must be equal to or later than the License Check Date of the version you are installing. It is a floor, not a range - the documented failure condition is the service check date being earlier, and no upper bound is defined. So the contract is not verified at upgrade time; it only decides how far forward that stamp can move when you reactivate. Same article: updates (maintenance or point releases, e.g. 17.1.1 to 17.1.2) perform no date verification at all, only upgrades do.
On the license version number: "Licensed version" and "Licensed date" are semi-static values stamped when the unit is first licensed and are not part of the check. K94935304 puts it plainly: "The only dates that matter during re-activation and upgrade are 'Service Check Date' on a Big-IP and the 'License Check Date' for a specific software major revision." - https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K94935304
JQuiroga 😁
