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.
CirrusHi 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 😁
