When multiple pool of licenses (Bandwidth/instance) are purchased at different points in time, the Service agreement (SA) date and expiration date are different, causing each pool of licenses to be recognized as separate on Citrix ADM, instead of one combined pool of licenses. This sometimes may cause allocation errors when the customer tries to assign capacity more than available in one of the pools. See the section below for More Details.

More Details
Here is an example when adding VPX on SDX:

During VPX creation on SDX or assigning capacity to Citrix ADC, there is an error: "Failed to set capacity. Reason: Request to <IP address> failed with error Failed to allocate requested capacity. Reason: Unknown error: -5 license capacity are : Instance: 10, Platinum Bandwidth: 22Gbps, Enterprise Bandwidth: 0Gbps, Standard Bandwidth: 0Gbps" 

Navigate to /mpsconfig/license/ on ADM.
grep INCR ./*lic

You would see the different SA(in bold) and expiration dates(not bold).
 

./FID_f49cf077_b257_4f56_929c_f89ac1f0d417.lic:INCREMENT CNS_INST_CCS CITRIX 2024.1125 25-dec-2024 5 \
./FID_f49cf077_b257_4f56_929c_f89ac1f0d417.lic:INCREMENT CNS_INST_CCS CITRIX 2024.1130 30-dec-2024 5 \

How to check if there are multiple pools on Citrix ADM?

In ADM, Navigate to Networks -> Licenses -> Scroll down to “License expiry information” table. This table shows the expiration date for the available pool of licenses.

If the dates/edition are different, then it shows in different line item.

If two license pools of the same edition have the different expiry date, this would show as different line item (showing different days to expire).

If two license pools of the same edition have the same expiry date, then license expiry information table shows this as sum of both licenses count in one-line item. Example, if the 2 pools of 50 vCPU were purchased with same SA and expiration dates, it would show a count of 100 vCPU license.

Licenses need to be generated with the same License SA and expiration date in order for ADM to “merge” the two pools of capacity. Please reach out to your Citrix sales/account team to discuss the available options for SA date resolution. Your sales / account team will work with you to find the best solution for your unique needs.
Speak to a Citrix ADC sales expert

Problem Cause

If the SA date for 2 pools are different, then ADM recognizes these as separate licenses instead of merging them together as one big license.

Let’s consider an example with 2 pools with different SA dates and same edition:
Pool A – total 40G available – if 30G Allocated to ADC X (10G left)
Pool B – total 60G available – if 50G Allocated to ADC Y (10G left)

Even though a total 20G of capacity left, these are treated as 2 separate license, Citrix ADC will not be able to checkout left over 20G license from Citrix ADM. 

In such case, license check-out fails for pooled bandwidth in the MPX/SDX/VPX. 

---------------------- 

Tuesday, 22 Sep 20 12:00:07.781 +0200 [Error] [Main] Failure reason: Unknown Error: -2 

Tuesday, 22 Sep 20 12:00:07.781 +0200 [Error] [Main] Check-out Platinum bandwidth 20Gbps failed. Continue with 0Gbps 

Tuesday, 22 Sep 20 12:00:07.781 +0200 [Error] [Main] Bandwidth check out failure reason: -2 

  

License files in ADM server is generated with 2 different license SA dates. 

  

Sep 22 11:59:53 <local0.info> NSSDX07 nslped: get_inventory(): PEM CNS_PBW10MB_CCS, InUseLic: 3000, AvailLic: 4000 

Sep 22 11:59:53 <local0.info> NSSDX07 nslped: get_inventory(): PEM CNS_PBW10MB_CCS, InUseLic: 5000, AvailLic: 6000 


Current pool usage as per SDX logs 


Pool 1 : Total : 40 GB : Used : 30GB 

Pool 2: Total : 60 GB : Used : 50 GB 

  
So ADC will not be able to check-out license of 20 GB unit since remaining licenses are split into 2 pools.