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Enterprise Master Licenses

You can opt to manage your licenses at enterprise level. Your licenses are shared between the sub-estates managed by your enterprise. You cannot turn off Enterprise Master Licenses once you have changed license management.

If your organization has a single Sophos Central Admin account that owns all the purchased (full) licenses you can transfer the licenses to your Sophos Central Enterprise account. These licenses are the master licenses for your entire organization. See Transfer licenses.

If you have several sub-estates with independent licensing you need to consolidate your licenses to use them as master licenses. See Consolidate licenses.

Enterprise Super Admins can allocate licenses from the pool of master licenses.

Terminology

Sophos Central Enterprise uses the following terms:

  • Enterprise usage: The number of licenses the enterprise currently uses.
  • Enterprise limit: The maximum number of licenses for the enterprise.
  • Enterprise remaining: The number of licenses still available for allocation.
  • Sub-estate usage: The number of licenses the sub-estate currently uses.
  • Sub-estate limit: The maximum number of licenses allocated to the sub-estate.

License allocation

Licenses are available to master-licensed sub-estates when licenses are renewed or activated.

To allocate licenses, do as follows:

  1. Go to My Sub-Estates > Sub-Estates.
  2. Select a sub-estate, and then click Allocate Licenses.

  3. Next to each license type, enter the allocation limit.

    If you set the license allocation for a sub-estate to Don't use in this sub-estate for a specific license type, the sub-estate can't use licenses of that type from your pool. The product isn't available to that sub-estate.

    If you allocate licenses of a specific type to a sub-estate, the sub-estate can use those licenses. If a sub-estate uses licenses over its allocation for a license type, this shows as over-usage for the enterprise, as well as the sub-estate.

  4. Click Allocate Licenses.

We recommend using only one license per sub-estate for identical products. For example, if you have two licenses for XDR, set one to blank (unlimited use up to the number available) or a specific number, and set the other license to Don't use in this sub-estate so that it can be allocated to different sub-estates.

If you attempt to add an allocation greater than your Enterprise Limit of licenses, you'll get an alert for "Invalid allocation limit set". The number you allocate must be the same or less than the Enterprise Limit number. Review the number under the Enterprise Allocation column and compare it with the total number under the Enterprise Limit column.

Add-on licenses

You can allocate prerequisite products to sub-estates when allocating add-on products to get value from add-ons. For example, Encryption add-on for Email advanced should be added with the Email advanced product. However, we won’t disallow addons from being added without prerequisite products.

Transfer licenses

Before you begin:

  • You must have only one sub-estate that owns all your full licenses.
  • You must have Enterprise Management turned on in the sub-estate that owns the licenses.

When you transfer:

  • You cannot go back to using individual licenses for each sub-estate.
  • All licenses are shared across the sub-estates in your enterprise.
  • You must manage licenses in Sophos Central Enterprise.
  • The Sophos Central administrators for your organization can't buy licenses or apply activation keys in Sophos Central Admin.

To transfer your licenses, do as follows:

  1. Click your Profile icon Profile icon., and then click Licensing.
  2. Click Convert to Enterprise Master Licenses.
  3. Read the confirmation message about conversion and click Convert to Enterprise Master Licenses.

All your licenses are moved to your Sophos Central Enterprise account. Your licenses are shown on the Licensing page.

All your sub-estates now use licenses from your master licensing pool.

Consolidate licenses

You must get a new activation key that consolidates your licenses. In most cases this key is applied automatically. You may receive a key from your partner. If you do, you must apply it on the Licensing page.

Before you begin:

  • You must have several sub-estates with independent licenses.
  • You must have Enterprise Management turned on for one of the sub-estates.

When you consolidate:

  • License consolidation may take a few days.
  • You cannot go back to using individual licenses for each-sub-estate.
  • All licenses are shared across the sub-estates in your enterprise.
  • You must manage all licenses in Sophos Central Enterprise.
  • The Sophos Central administrators for your organization can't buy licenses or apply activation keys in Sophos Central Admin.

To consolidate your licenses, do as follows:

  1. Click your Profile icon Profile icon., and then click Licensing.
  2. Click Convert to Enterprise Master Licenses.

  3. Read the confirmation message about conversion and click Convert to Enterprise Master Licenses. The Licensing page now shows that you've requested conversion to master licenses.

    A consolidation request email is sent to you and your Sophos partner.

  4. Work with your Sophos partner to create a consolidation plan.

  5. Your new activation key may be applied automatically. If not, enter the key in Apply consolidation enterprise licenses activation key and click Apply.

All your licenses are moved to your Sophos Central Enterprise account. Your licenses are shown on the Licensing page.

Any of your sub-estates that are using trial licenses are converted to full licenses.

All your sub-estates now use licenses from your master licensing pool.

Change license allocation

You can change license allocation at any time.

You must login to allocate licenses when the license becomes active.

If there is an allocation set already and you set the value to Don't use in this sub-estate, this removes the license completely from a sub-estate. That product will then be unavailable to that sub-estate.

Remove a license from a sub-estate

Note

If you remove a license, the product won't be usable in a sub-estate.

To remove a license, do as follows:

  1. Go to My Sub-Estates > Sub-Estates.
  2. Select a sub-estate, and then click Allocate Licenses.
  3. In the Sub-estate limit column, select Don't use in this sub-estate for the license that you want to remove.
  4. Click Save.

The license will then be removed from the sub-estate.

Fix invalid allocation

You may see the error "Invalid allocation limit set". This means that you've allocated more licenses to sub-estates than you've bought.

This over-allocation can happen if you renew with fewer licenses than you bought and allocated originally. You can fix this by reducing the allocation for sub-estates.

To fix over-allocation, do as follows:

  1. Go to My Sub-Estates > Sub-Estates.
  2. Select a sub-estate and click Allocate Licenses.
  3. In the Sub-estate limit column, select Don't use in this sub-estate or reduce the number of licenses assigned to the sub-estate.
  4. Click Save.
  5. Repeat this on more sub-estates until the license allocation no longer exceeds the Enterprise limit.