Get Free Cisco AnyConnect Licences For COVID-19 Homeworkers

KB ID 0001661

Problem

Cisco released information on their blog a few days ago to say that they would be offering free Umbrella, Duo and AnyConnect Licences to customers in the wake of the the COVID-19 outbreak.

Thats great news, but there’s no information on how to get the AnyConnect licences. It just says speak to your Cisco partner. As I am a Cisco partner I was confused, and it seems my colleagues were also. So I contacted Cisco Partner help, who passed me to licensing, who passed me to Cisco TAC, who opened a call. 24 hours later still no reply. Luckily by this time a colleague had managed to set this up for a client, and he pointed me in the right direction, (cheers Trev!)

Solution

Note: This procedure DOES NOT work for vASA or FTD. You can email licensing@cisco.com Subject: ‘COVID-19 AnyConnect License Request’. Provide your platform information, and smart account details, and they will provision licenses for your account that you can then assign via the usual methods.

Note: I exclusively work at command line, I realise some people are terrified of doing this, so if you want to work with activation keys and serial numbers in the ASDM then read this post.

Log into your Cisco Device (in my case a Cisco ASA) and get the serial number. (Issue a show version command).

Note: I would also take a copy of the Activation Key at this point paste it into Notepad and keep it somewhere safe.

Also from the show version command you will see I only have the factory default 2 AnyConnect premium licences.

You will need a Cisco CCO account, these are free to setup and once you have one you can log into the licensing portal, from there, (either using classic licences or SMART licences) > Get Licences > Demo and Evaluation > Security Products > AnyConnect Plus/Apex(ASA) Demo Licence and Emergency COVID-19 Licence > Next.

Enter the Serial Number of your ASA (from above), Here I asked for 10 users, you will get the maximum for your model of ASA, if you don’t know what the maximum is see this article > Next.

Review > Next.

You will get sent the licence by email, (this has a habit of going into spam!) But I download them directly anyway.

Heres you new activation key, copy it to the clipboard;

Excute the following commands;

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Petes-ASA# configure terminal
Petes-ASA(config)# activation-key a27ed158 406176b7 799f41f2 6184be43 12345678
Validating activation key. This may take a few minutes...
The requested key is a timebased key and is activated, it has 91 days remaining.

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Now if you recheck your AnyConnect Licence count, it will match the maximum for your hardware.

I Need More! Sorry buddy, you need to replace the hardware with a larger one.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

AnyConnect 4 – Plus and Apex Licensing Explained

Cisco ASA 5500 AnyConnect Setup From Command Line