Applying a license to Liberty installations

You can upgrade the edition or license of Liberty by using a self-extracting Java archive (JAR) file. In version 17.0.0.2 and later, you can also apply a license archive to Liberty installations. You can apply a license archive to any version 8.5.5.8 and later.

Before you begin

To download the license archives from IBM® Fix Central or Passport Advantage®, you must be enrolled as a customer.

Your system must meet the operating system and Java™ requirements for using Liberty. See WebSphere Application Server detailed system requirements.

For the IBM i platform, the minimum supported Java level is installed at one of the following locations:

/QOpenSys/QIBM/ProdData/JavaVM/jdk_version/32bit
/QOpenSys/QIBM/ProdData/JavaVM/jdk_version/64bit

About this task

Liberty offers installation from a ZIP archive file or a self-extracting Java archive (JAR) file as an alternative to using IBM Installation Manager. If you installed Liberty by using one of these archive files, you can apply the product license by applying an executable JAR file, available from IBM Fix Central, or the Passport Advantage website.

You might upgrade Liberty in the following example scenarios:

Upgrade an unsupported ILAN edition or other unsupported edition to a supported production edition.
Upgrade a basic edition to a more advanced edition for access to advanced features.

You might apply a license archive to Liberty in the following example scenarios:

Liberty Network Deployment to Liberty base.
Liberty base to Liberty Core.

Note: You lose some advanced features by applying a license archive from an advanced edition to a basic edition. If you apply a license archive from an edition that includes certain features that are not applied to the edition that you are applying the license archive to, you might need to uninstall the features before you apply the license archive.

You can apply license archives to WebSphere® Application Server Liberty offerings in the following paths:

Table 1. Liberty offering license archive paths
License JAR file	Source edition	Target edition
wlp-core-license.jar	WebSphere Application Server Liberty (ILAN) – Unsupported ZIP or JAR file installations	WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core
wlp-base-license.jar	WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Liberty WebSphere Application Server Liberty	WebSphere Application Server Liberty
wlp-nd-license.jar	WebSphere Application Server Liberty (ILAN) – Unsupported ZIP or JAR file installations WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core WebSphere Application Server Liberty	WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Liberty

For example, an installation of WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core requires features from WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Liberty. If you have the required entitlement, you can download the wlp-nd-license.jar license file and apply it to your Liberty installation, which upgrades the license from WebSphere Application Server Liberty Core to WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Liberty. Upgrading the license does not install any features from WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Liberty, but it enables you to install features for the edition to your Liberty installation if needed.

Procedure

Download the license archive for the edition from the IBM Passport Advantage website.

For a list of the license archive JAR files on IBM Fix Central, see the Fix Central website.

For a list of Passport Advantage part numbers for the license archive JAR files, see Download WebSphere Application Server from Passport Advantage Online.
Apply the license archive to an existing Liberty installation.
For example, to apply the license by using the installation wizard and the wlp-nd-license.jar file, run the following command:
```
java -jar wlp-nd-license.jar
```