Nebula [License 2.0] - How License Works

Previously licenses could be added, assigned, and counted. With License 2.0, they can also be unassigned and transferred.

License Activation Process

Adding Licenses

• Nebula administrators can input license keys to add add-on licenses to an organization
• Bundled licenses are added to organizations at the same time its bundled device is added
• Added licenses all start in an inactive state.
  • Licenses in an inactive state mean it has not started its expiration countdown/timer

Assigning Licenses

• Add-on PRO/PLUS Pack licenses can be assigned to any product model
• Add-on UTM Pack licenses can be assigned to USG FLEX only
• All bundled license starts-off assigned (permanently) to its device
• Multiple add-on (PLUS and PRO) licenses can be assigned to the same device

Activating Services (PRO/PLUS/UTM)

• Nebula administrators cannot directly or selectively activate licenses
• Nebula administrators must use the [Upgrade] button to activate services indirectly
• Services that are activated changes one of their assigned licenses to counting status

Counting Licenses

• Licenses assigned to devices change to counting if the service is activated
• License begins expiration countdown/timer as soon as it changes to counting status

Un-assigning PLUS/PRO Pack Licenses

• Allows licenses to be assigned to another device
• Licenses can be un-assigned before activation
• Licenses cannot be un-assigned after activation

Transferring PLUS/PRO Pack Licenses

• PLUS/PRO Licenses can be transferred to a different organization with the same owner or administrators with delegated authority
  • Un-assigned licenses can be transferred
  • Assigned licenses can be transferred

Upgrading Organization Status

• [Upgrade] button can upgrade an organization when:
  • PLUS/PRO service is not in an active status
  • All devices are assigned with PRO pack licenses
  • All devices are assigned with PLUS pack licenses
  • All devices are assigned with a mix of PRO/PLUS licenses
• Clicking [Upgrade] causes:
  • Assigned PLUS/PRO licenses to start counting its expiration countdown/timer (at most one license per device)
  • Changes organization status to PLUS or PRO

Upgrading Base Pack Organizations – PLUS Pack

Upgrades to PLUS organization if all devices are assigned with PLUS Pack licenses

Upgrading Base Pack Organizations – PRO Pack

Upgrades to PRO organization if all devices are assigned with PRO Pack licenses

Upgrading Base Pack Organizations – Mixed Licenses

• PRO pack licenses cover both PRO and PLUS pack tiers
• PLUS pack licenses cannot be used to upgrade the organization to PRO pack tier

Maintaining Organization Status

• Nebula administrators can extend PLUS or PRO period by assigning multiple licenses to a device
  • When an assigned license expires, an extra assigned license takes over and starts counting its expiration countdown/timer
• Adding new devices into a PRO organization, NCC can maintain PRO status by counting any bundled or add-on PRO pack license assigned to this device
• Order of counting multiple assigned licenses:
  • bundled à add-on (shortest duration) à add-on (longest duration)

Maintaining Organization Status – Assigning Extra Licenses

Any license that expires is immediately replaced with the extra assigned license:

Maintaining Organization Status – Adding New Device

Adding a new device to PRO/PLUS organization with a non-counting license will start counting as soon as it is added:

Maintaining Organization Status – Adding New Device

Adding a new device without an assigned license causes the organization to enter the grace period.

The license must be assigned and the [Upgrade] has to be pressed again.

Downgrading Organization – Expiration

• PLUS or PRO organization downgrades if any counting license expires
• Licenses may not share the same expiration date because licenses may be transferred from different organizations
• NCC initiates a 15-day long grace period when one or more licenses expire
  • Organization downgrades if nothing is done after the grace period ends
  • The grace period provides administrators time to assign new licenses

Downgrading Organization – Expiration (and Recovery)

• Administrators can assign a license to a device with an expired license
• Must select [Upgrade] to recover organization status

• Administrators can remove the device with an expired license
• Must select [Upgrade Now] to recover organization status

Downgrading Organization – Adding New Device

• The organization may downgrade if a new device is added or transferred to the organization carrying none or a lower license tier license
  • PRO/PLUS organization downgrades to BASE if added/transferred device has no assigned license
  • NCC initiates a 15-day long grace period before the downgrade

Changing Organization Status – PLUS -> PRO

Downgrading Organization – Email Notification

• NCC sends an email notification to the owner account when any counting license expires before 15 days
• MZC sends an email notification to the owner account when any counting license expires in 90/60/30/14/7 days

Compensation – Point Conversion

• The system will automatically compensate users with NCC points remaining in their organizations during the conversion date
• License Points will be converted to time-based PRO pack licenses
• The organization must have devices added in the organization to convert
• If a Pro pack organization has added devices and NCC points,
  • Each device are assigned and activated with PRO bundled licenses that expire at the expiration (co-termination) date

Compensation – Limited Lifetime Licenses

• Any organization that has upgraded using at least one limited lifetime license is changed to LLL status
• LLL-AP/LLL-SWT/LLL-GW/LLL-UP can only be assigned to its respective product line
• LLL organizations may add and assign PRO pack licenses to new devices to maintain LLL status
• LLL organizations can still downgrade (after the grace period) to a BASE organization if new devices are added without licenses
• LLL organizations do not support mix with PLUS license

Removing Device from Organization

• To avoid user misunderstanding, the register/unregister device action was changed to add/remove
• The device that is removed from a Nebula organization:
  • It is still registered on the MyZyxel
  • Still continues any activated license expiration countdown/timer
  • Requires QR code scan with Mobile App to add this device to an organization owned by a different account
• USG FLEX on cloud mode that is removed from a Nebula organization returns to standalone mode and does not require device registration again

USG FLEX License Activation

• USG FLEX UTM Pack license activates all security service for both cloud and standalone mode
• Activating  PRO/UTM pack service via NCC activates standalone UTM services as well
• Activating standalone UTM service via MyZyxel website also activates cloud PRO/UTM pack service as well
• For UTM Pack service activated before the Phase 11 launch, PRO Pack and UTM Pack still share the same expiration date

Why the change?

• Simplification is by far the main driver in the change, after receiving a lot of feedback from partners and clients. We have decided to evolve the licensing to become much simpler to understand and manage. The change to per-device licensing allows IT teams to maintain various expiration dates across devices, sites or organizations. Each Organisation can have a single shared expiration which will be manageable through our new Circle licence management platform for channel partners (supporting Nebula later this year).
  Additionally, Nebula Control Center (NCC) Pro Pack licenses will move to flat-rate pricing across all product types, making it much simpler for purchasing, manage and renew.
• Unification is another factor for our ever-evolving platform. As we begin to advance and bring in more sophisticated devices like the USG FLEX series into Nebula, we need to maintain a simple migration path between on-premise (traditional deployments) and our cloud platform. These changes will ensure that we bring a consistent, unified approach to the customer experience both in platform and licensing.
• Improved Packs This update will also introduce a new Plus Pack that includes a subset of the most commonly requested features for administering sites (from the current Pro Pack) at a much more affordable flat rate price (per device). We will also launch the Managed Service Provider (MSP) Pack that will facilitate cross-org management and help elevate the manageability in Nebula for MSP customers.

What are the changes?

License – MSP Pack

• Bound on: Nebula Account
• Available as: Add-on License
• Scope: MSP
• Duration: 1-year/2-year/1-month
• Description: Unlocks MSP menu and all features included
  • MSP Branding
  • Admins & Teams
  • Cross-org synchronization

Look into Nebula Licensing 2.0 - MSP Portal License Trial and Information for more information.

License – PLUS Pack

• Bound on: AP, Switch or Security Gateway
• Available as: Add-on License
• Scope: Organization
• Duration: 1-year/2-year/1-month
• Description: Unlocks PLUS pack features; Upgrades Organization Tier to PLUS

License – PRO Pack

• Bound on: AP, Switch, or Security Gateway
• Available as: Bundled License, Add-on License
• Scope: Organization
• Duration: 1-year/2-year/1-month
• Description: Unlocks PRO pack features; Upgrades Organization Tier to PRO

License – UTM Security Pack

• Bound on: Any USG FLEX model
• Available as: Bundled License, Add-on License
• Scope: Per-device
• Duration: 1-year/2-year/1-month
• Description: Unlocks Security Services supported by USG FLEX
• Additional Info: UTM licenses come with a specific USG FLEX model

License – Secure WiFi

• Bound on: Any USG FLEX model
• Available as: Add-on License
• Scope: Per-device
• Duration: 1-year/2-year/1-month
• Description: Unlocks Remote AP for Teleworker solution
• Additional Info: Secure WiFi licenses come with a specific USG FLEX   model

Bundled License vs Add-on License

• Bundled Licenses
  • It comes with purchasing a Nebula, NebulaFlex Pro or USG FLEX device
  • Permanently assigned to the bundled device
  • The license cannot be transferred from a bundled device
• Add-on (Digital) Licenses
  • Purchased from the marketplace or resellers
  • The license can be assigned to different devices
  • The license can be transferred from one device to another

The basics: The new license 2.0 uses a time-based and device-based concept. This implies that all its devices registered for one organization need a license within the same time period to keep the organization with PRO licensing.

Now that the new concept is explained let's look at how your licenses are being converted into the license 2.0 model.

• My PRO organization has devices, and all license points are being used

The image below shows an example of an organization with many devices and all Nebula Control Center (NCC) points

The license conversion, in this case, is very smooth and simple. Nebula will automatically convert the license points to device-based PRO pack licenses without the need for your intervention.

All the devices (546) in this organization will have an NCC license bound, with the same expiration date (2021-05-07) stated for your Org before the License 2.0 launch.

You can take a look into the converted and activated device-based licenses on the following page in Nebula:

Organization-wide -> License & inventory -> License

• My PRO organization has devices and license points being used, but some points are not activated yet

Similar to scenario 1, those license points used by your devices will be allocated to provide one license to all your devices, matching the same expiration date as your org-based license.

However, the licenses that are not yet activated (only registered) need to be converted by our development team. We will convert the device-based license following the next equivalence table:

30 NCC points = 1-year pro license

As an example for this case, the following org had 100 Nebula Points that were only registered but were not activated:

As an example for this case, the following org had 100 Nebula Points that were only registered but were not activated:

We will convert these 100 NCC points into a 1-year Pro license x 3 (90 points, based on the table above) and a 1-month Pro license x 4 (10 points).

Please raise a Support Request, and our team will gladly help you solve your issue with due priority.

Once our development team has done the conversion, you can take a look at the converted non-activated device-based licenses on the following page in Nebula:

Organization-wide -> License & inventory -> License 

• My PRO organization has no devices, but there are license points activated

In this case, NCC cannot automatically calculate the expiration date since there are no devices in the organization. For the time being, these licenses need to be converted by our development team.

Please raise a Support Request, and our team will gladly help you solve your issue with due priority.

Once our development team has done the conversion, you can take a look into the converted and non-activated device-based licenses on the following page in Nebula:

Organization-wide > License & inventory > License 

• I have licenses that I want to transfer from one organization to another

For the time being, the license transfer feature is not available in the Nebula Control Center interface. Please raise a Support Request, and our team will gladly help you solve your issue with due priority.

Important:

• Bundled Licenses will no longer be able to transfer from one organization to another.
• Add-on licenses that you registered by a license key.

Bundled Licenses/Service