Netgate Nexus Licensing

A Netgate Nexus license resides on the instance which performs the role of the controller. Customers can purchase entitlements from the Netgate Store which they can then apply to this license. At any given time, there will only be one active license (with its various entitlements) in use on the controller.

This document explains how to obtain an initial license, as well as how to apply tokens to update the entitlements of the license.

Note

This guide assumes the user has already enabled Multi-Instance Management as described in Netgate Nexus Controller Setup.

Licensing Requirements

Netgate Nexus requires pfSense Plus 25.03 or later running on Netgate® appliances, or on AWS and Azure virtual instances. While Netgate Nexus may work on third-party enterprise class hardware, Netgate cannot guarantee it will function and strongly cautions customers against using such hardware.

To check device eligibility, enable Netgate Nexus and visit the License menu on the devices. If Netgate Nexus cannot support the hardware, it will display an error message.

Controlled instances must be able to access the Controller. Air-gapped, offline, virtual and some hardware systems without serial numbers or other identifiers are not capable of participating in Netgate Nexus and cannot be managed.

Initializing the License

To start using the licensing system, the first step is to initialize a license.

To initialize a license:

  • Open the |nexus| GUI on the designated controller and login

  • Click the License menu item on the left side to open the license system

    ../../_images/nexus-license-menu.png

    Netgate Nexus License Menu Entry

  • Inspect the Current License area of the screen to ensure the table is empty, as depicted in Netgate Nexus License System with Add button marked

    Note

    An empty table indicates no license has been initialized on this controller.

  • Click nexus-add-item to create a license request, which initializes the license

    ../../_images/nexus-license-add.png

    Netgate Nexus License System with Add button marked

  • Fill in the Name and Email fields on the Create License Request form

    Note

    Leave the License Request Type set to License Signing Request.

    ../../_images/nexus-license-initialize.png

    Netgate Nexus License

  • Click OK

This initializes the license, which the GUI then displays in the license system screen.

License Details

../../_images/nexus-license-details.png

Netgate Nexus License Details

When viewing the license, the License System displays the following details on the screen:

License ID:

A four-part phrase (e.g. word1-word2-word3-word4) which uniquely identifies the license.

Expiration:

The expiration date of the license, typically a one year period.

Status:

The current status of the license, e.g. Valid.

Features:

A list of entitlements applied to this license.

mim-devices:

The number of devices which can be controlled by multi-instance management from this device. The initial value is 1 by default, which means the current license may control one instance of pfSense Plus software, which is the instance upon which the controller itself is running.

License Requests:

A list of license requests associated with the current license and entitlements.

Increasing the Managed Instances

To increase the number of instances which can be managed by this controller, customers can purchase entitlements from the Netgate Store.

On the Multi-Instance Management product page, choose the quantity of additional instances to control, then complete the purchase.

The store sends several email messages after a purchase. One of these email messages contains the title “Netgate License Tokens” and looks like Netgate Nexus License Token Text:

../../_images/nexus-license-token-text.png

Netgate Nexus License Token Text

The example purchase depicted in Netgate Nexus License Token Text contains entitlements for six additional managed devices.

To add this entitlement to the license:

  • Select the token text in the email message, as depicted in Netgate Nexus License Token Text

  • Copy the text to the clipboard

  • Open the |nexus| GUI on the designated controller and login

  • Click the License menu item on the left side to open the license system

  • Click nexus-add-item to create a license request

  • Paste the token text into the License Token field

    ../../_images/nexus-license-token-add.png

    Adding a Netgate Nexus License Token

  • Click OK

The license details now contain the new License Request in the list at the bottom of the screen and the mim-devices count reflects the new total of device entitlements: 7:

../../_images/nexus-license-with-entitlements.png

Netgate Nexus License with Entitlements

Customers can add more managed instances to a license at any time by following the above procedure again.

See also

Customers with questions can reach out to Netgate Sales or Netgate TAC.