Overall AP License Limit - AP/PEF Licenses

[Martin]

We have increased our AP-Licenses, but not our PEF Licenses.

The Overall AP License Limit remains at the lower number, which in this case is the PEF-license count.

We do not use Firewall features (Firewalling ist done on dedicated firewalls) and we do not do VPN-Connections other than a few RAPs.

So from my understanding we would only need the PEF licenses for the RAPs right now?

Why are the PEF licenses consumed, and why do they determine the maximum number of AP-Licenses available?

[cclemmer]

The PEF license unlocks the ability to create custom user roles/policies on the controller. When the license is enabled, it needs to match the number of APs licensed.

[jhoward2 · Accepted solution]

On the controllers, APs terminated on the same controller, there is no control (in AOS 6.x) in how individual licenses are consumed. So if you have 100 AP licenses and only 50 PEF licenses, the controller will only enable 50 APs worth of connectivity. It is a software limitation unfortunately. AOS 8 has a tad more flexibility if you can split up the controllers that are terminating the APs that need PEF versus the ones that don't, but they still have to be on separate controllers. 

If you don't need PEF and want all of your AP capacity, you would need to delete/remove your existing/current PEF/RFP/WebCC licenses so that all that is left is the AP license, then the controller will enable the rest of the APs.

Note: If/when you delete the PEF license, any custom roles used by any group will be removed. So if you have RAPs using PEF in the RAP or user roles and delete PEF, you will need to change the role to one of the default/canned roles on the controller without PEF.

You would be FAR better served to purchase the remaining PEF licenses you need, as PEF is a critical feature and functionality .

[Martin]

A rather unsatisfactory licensing politic.

Running a rather small deployment scenario with only one controller, about 100 APs and a dozen RAPs, and firewalling done on firewalls the only actual reason we actually need the PEF licenses are the few RAPs.

It would be more logical if a PEF-license would INCLUDE an AP license and be just more expensive!

But forcing the customer to buy both for each additional AP as soon as you need ONE PEF-license is difficult to argue...