License upgrade clusterXL security gateway from r77.30 to R80.20

[Sergio_Ordaz]

Hello,

I hope you are all doing fine. I would like to let you know that I am relatively new doing upgrades in checkpoint devices. Recently, I upgraded the SMS and the dedicated smartevent server from r77.30 to r80.20, without any issues. Now, I have to upgrade the security gateways of that deployment from r77.30 to r80.20. So, I came up with a question when I was reading the guide for this procedure and it says "Upgrade the licenses on the Cluster Members, if needed. See Working with Licenses." 

What does it mean? Do I need to upgrade the licenses? Right now those licenses are working fine and they are valid until 2021. Do  I need to check if the license is valid for r80.20? 

Regards.

[Magnus-Holmberg]

There should be no need for upgrading licens.
"New" licens are based on Blades and number of cores/size of the box.
In this case "if needed" must refer to if you planning to add any new blades/functions that requires new licenses.

Licens are not based on the version of the software.

regards,
magnus

[Timothy_Hall]

The "upgrade licenses if needed" statement is probably there for the following reasons:

1) In the old days anytime there was a "major" version upgrade (i.e. R4.X->R5X, R5X->R6X, R6X->R7X, etc.) the license generation process/scheme would be updated and the licenses would need to be regenerated for the new major version.  Mercifully, the bladed licensing scheme did not change R7X->R8X.

2) There are many features/blades that are separately licensed, yet always included with every firewall license sold.  Examples of these would be Content Awareness starting in R80.10 and Identity Awareness starting in R75.  However if you are still using a license generated against an older version prior to these features being added, the required licenses for these new features won't be present and you won't be allowed to use them after the upgrade.