The Nexenta HA plugin is licensed on a per machine basis. Licenses come in two forms, a temporary one that expires after 45 days, and a permanent one that never expires. Licenses are delivered in a packaged .deb file. Normally this .deb file is automatically uploaded from your Nexenta repository during plugin install or upgrade and requires no manual intervention. The license .deb file contains the following cluster files:

• A license file which contains a pair of license keys for the two nodes of the cluster - the HA cluster plugin will check each license key in in the license file till either a match for the machine signature is found or end of file is reached (i.e. the license file does not contain a valid key).
• A password file with randomly generated passwords so that the two nodes can issue authenticated cluster commands to each other (this is different from the ssh bindings and provides an extra level of security).
• A configuration file distribution password file, again with matched passwords so paired cluster nodes can distribute updated configuration data between themselves.

In some circumstances it is necessary to install the cluster license directly. To do this you will need a copy of the debian license package, it will named similar to rsf-1-licence_1.0.0_solaris-i386.deb - copy this file on both nodes to/opt/HAC/RSF-1/etc/, then to install this package do the following after logging into NMC:

nmc$ option expert_mode=1
nmc$ !bash
nmc$ You are about to enter the Unix ("raw") shell and execute low-level Unix command(s). Warning: using low-level Unix commands is not recommended! Execute?  (y/n)y
# cd /opt/HAC/RSF-1/etc
# dpkg --force-all -i ./rsf-1-licence_1.0.0_solaris-i386.deb
# <crtl>-D

Remember that this procedure must be executed on both nodes.

The HA plug-in checks the license file every hour, on the hour, for changes (therefore there is no need to restart a running cluster).