My Nebula licenses are gone / expiring too early! Why is this?

Often, customers call in, claiming that they have purchased a one-year or three-year-license for their Nebula device, and claiming that they receive an alert mail telling them that their device will expire far sooner than planned or similar. What at first glance looks like the customer has been stripped off of their purchased license time often turns out to be rooted in misunderstanding the way the Nebula Control Center works in terms of licensing. 

Let's shed some light onto this!

• Having your Nebula Control Center licensed with so called NCC points (Nebula Control Center), you gain plenty of insight monitorwise
• You also gain some dedicated Pro-Pack Features, such as showing the Nebula Topology, Configuration Template etc. p.p.
• At this current stage, Nebula is not capable of differentiating between non licensed and licensed products within one organization!

The last note is especially important for us to understand, as this is the main reason why we encounter this issue:

Let's say, a Nebula Access Point will need up to 30 NCC points to have a full year of Pro-Pack Features, and Nebula Switches need 40 NCC points for the same. Let's also say, that you add a single Nebula Switch with a three-year license and three NebulaFlex Access Points. Know that most NebulaFlex devices, such as the NWA1123AC-PRO e.g., by default do not include any license/license points.

Since Nebula cannot differentiate between non-licensed and licensed devices within the same organization, the three-year license of the Switch will be transformed into points worth of three years of Switch = 120 points. These points are fed into a point-pool, which is applicable for the entire organization. 

Since we cannot mix up non-licensed and licensed devices, all devices within the organization will be according to the portal licensed, feeding off of the available amount of points. 
This in turn now in our example means, that not only the switch, but also the Access-points are now feeding off the total amount of points. 

Let's calculate, how long our organization is now licensed:

• A single NWA1123-AC PRO needs 30points/yr, having this unit 3x amounts to 90 points/yr in total
• The switch needs 40 points/yr, and we only have one switch, amounts to 40 points/yr in total
• Summing this up, we need for our organization in it's current form 130 points/yr to keep it into licensed state

Having only 120 points at hand, we have to divide this amount through the needed points per year: 120points p. year  /  130points p. year  = 0,923 years = ~11 months

This means, that our points only are enough for not three full years, but due to split-up enough for roundabout 11 months!

Please also see the below graphic for your reference: