Applies To: Cloud-managed Fireboxes, Locally-managed Fireboxes
When you co-term licenses, you consolidate or merge your licenses to synchronize renewal dates. This makes it easier to manage and renew your licenses. When you activate a new Data Retention license, you can combine it with an existing license. The activation process merges the new license with the selected license and the two licenses are co-termed.
Each Data Retention license has these properties:
- Model Compatibility — the Firebox models you can assign the license to
- Days — the number of days of data to store in WatchGuard Cloud
- Expiration date — the date the license subscription expires
To extend a Data Retention license, both licenses must be compatible with the same Firebox models.
For more information about Data Retention licenses, see About Data Retention Licenses.
Data Retention Expiration Date Calculation
When you activate a new Data Retention license and choose to extend an existing Data Retention license, you can extend the expiration date of the original license or increase the number of days of data retention.
The number of days of data retention and the expiration date of the co-termed license depends on these factors:
- Your choice to extend the expiration date or increase the data retention days
- The remaining data retention days and term of the original license
- The data retention days and term of the new license you activated
The co-term calculation is the same whether you add data retention days or extend your license, with one important difference. The final data retention days associated with the co-termed licenses depends on whether you choose to add data retention days to an existing license or extend the expiration date.
This is the calculation used to determine the expiration date for co-termed licenses:
| New Expiration Date = | Today's Date + | (current data retention days x days until license expires) + (purchased data retention days x term days) |
| final data retention days |
If you add data retention days:
final data retention days = current data retention days + purchased data retention days
If you extend the expiration date:
final data retention days = purchased data retention days
WARNING: If you renew an existing license, and the new license has fewer data retention days than the original license, the final data retention days of the combined license is reduced. If you previously assigned the license to a Firebox, some previously stored data could be removed from WatchGuard Cloud.
When you activate a Data Retention license that has the same number of data retention days as the selected active license, and choose the option to extend the expiration date, the expiration date of the original license increases by the number of days in the term of the license you purchased.
These examples describe the co-term calculation for different license renewal and extension scenarios.
You have an active license for 60 days of Data Retention. The license expires in 45 days. You want to add 30 more days of data retention to this license. You purchase a 30-day Data Retention license with a one-year term length. When you activate the new license in the license activation wizard, select the existing license, and select Add Days. The license activation wizard calculates the new expiration date.
To calculate the new expiration date for your license, we can use the co-term calculation formula with these values:
- Current data retention days = 60
- Days until current data retention license term expires = 45
- Purchased data retention days = 30
- Term days for purchased data retention = 365
- Final data retention days count = 90 days (60 + 30)
| New Expiration Date = | Today's Date + | (60 data retention days x 45 term days) + (30 data retention days x 365 term days) |
| 90 data retention days |
When we calculate the value in the formula above, we get 13,650 ÷ 90 = 151.67. We round this value up to 152. So the new expiration date for 90 days of data retention is 152 days from the activation date of your new license.
The updated expiration date is a weighted average of the expiration date of the original license and the new license. In this example, when you add data retention days you also extend the expiration date of the co-termed license.
You have an active license for 60 days of Data Retention. The license expires in 10 days. You want to extend the expiration date of the license by two years. You purchase a new 60-day Data Retention license with a two-year term length. When you activate the new license in the license activation wizard, you select the existing license, and select Extend License.
To calculate the new expiration date for your license, we can use the co-term calculation formula with these values:
- Current retention days = 60
- Days until current data retention license term expires = 10
- Purchased retention days = 60
- Term days for purchased data retention = 730 (365 x 2)
- Final retention days count = 60 days
| New Expiration Date = | Today's Date + | (60 data retention days x 10 term days) + (60 data retention days x 730 term days) |
| 60 data retention days |
When we calculate the value in the formula above, we get 44,400 ÷ 60 = 740. The new expiration date for 60 days of data retention is 740 days from the activation date of your new license. Because both the existing and new license were for 60 days of data retention, the additional license simply extends the expiration date by two years.
You have an active license for 60 days of Data Retention. The license expires in 10 days. You want to renew the license expiration date and increase the data retention period to 90 days. You purchase a new 90-day Data Retention license with a one-year term length. When you activate the new license in the license activation wizard, you select the existing license, and select Extend License.
To calculate the new expiration date for your license, we can use the co-term calculation formula with these values:
- Current retention days = 60
- Days until current data retention license term expires = 10
- Purchased retention days = 90
- Term days for purchased data retention = 365
- Final retention days count = 90 days
| New Expiration Date = | Today's Date + | (60 data retention days x 10 term days) + (90 data retention days x 365 term days) |
| 90 data retention days |
When we calculate the value in the formula above, we get 34,650 ÷ 90 = 385. So the new expiration date for 90 data retention days is 385 days from the activation date of your new license.
You have a license for 60 days of data retention that expired 10 days ago, and you want to renew your license for another year. You purchase a 60-day Data Retention license with a one-year term length. When you activate the new license in the license activation wizard, you select the existing license and select Extend License.
To calculate the new expiration date for your license, we can use the co-term calculation formula with these values:
- Current retention days = 60
- Days until current data retention license term expires = -10
- Purchased retention days = 60
- Term days for purchased data retention = 365
- Final retention days count = 60 days
| New Expiration Date = | Today's Date + | (60 data retention days x -10 term days) + (60 data retention days x 365 term days) |
| 60 data retention days |
When we calculate the value in the formula above, we get 21,300 ÷ 60 = 355. So the new expiration date for your 60 days of data retention is 355 days from the activation date of your new license (the term length of your new license minus the 10 days).
You have a license for 60 days of data retention that expires in 10 days, and you want to renew your license for another year with only 30 days of data retention. You purchase a 30-day Data Retention license with a one-year term length. When you activate the license in the license activation wizard, you select the existing license and select Extend License.
To calculate the new expiration date for your license, we can use the co-term calculation formula with these values:
- Current retention days = 60
- Days until current data retention license term expires = 10
- Purchased retention days = 30
- Term days for purchased data retention = 365
- Final retention days count = 30 days
| New Expiration Date = | Today's Date + | (60 data retention days x 10 term days) + (30 data retention days x 365 term days) |
| 30 data retention days |
When we calculate the value in the formula above, we get 11,550 ÷ 30 = 385. So the new expiration date for your 60 days of data retention is 385 days from the activation date of your new license (365 days, plus a few more days for the remaining term of the original license.
When you renew a Data Retention license, and the new license has fewer data retention days than the existing license, we recommend you activate it near the expiration date of the existing license. If you activate the license key before the expiration date, the number of data retention days for the renewed license immediately changes to match the data retention days for the new license.