i am trying to build a x86_64 mikrotik bare metal. i found out that getic.com is selling a chr license for $130 lvl6 . is it the same with the $250 of the official website? if i purchase this even its for chr, can i use this on an x86_64 baremetal? Thank you in advance
Wow, that’s amazing that Getic can sell licenses so cheaply. The wholesale rate they get must be crazy.
CHR license keys and “regular” license keys are different and not interchangeable, from the perspective that a CHR key can only be applied to a CHR instance, and a regular key to a bare-metal install. (In certain scenarios, it is possible to apply a regular key to a virtualized router, but that’s generally not recommended since then you will lose out on some of the advantages of the CHR licensing approach, such as officially-supported license transference/re-use. You cannot under any circumstances apply a CHR license to a bare-metal install however. CHR licenses cannot be issued to anything other than virtual routers; it simply will not work to try to request a CHR license for a non-CHR router.)
However, when you pre-pay for a license key, the pricing for CHR license levels (P1/P10/PU) and non-CHR license levels (L4/L5/L6) are the same, and mapped to L4 > P1, L5 > P10, L6 > PU, as L4 (non-CHR) and P1 (CHR) are roughly equivalent to each other, and the same goes for L5 and P10, and L6 and PU.
Thus, when you pay for a “L6 / PU” license, up until the point where you actually generate a license key, that pre-paid license can become either a CHR license key or a non-CHR license key. Which kind of license key gets issued to you depends on the Software-ID of the router you request the key for. The license generation system can tell if the router is CHR or non-CHR based on Software-ID, and issues the appropriate, matching license key type (L6 or PU). Once you generate the key, though, at that point the license type is permanent (either CHR or non-CHR), and you cannot go back and exchange it for the other type later. Once you “cash in” your prepaid license for an actual key, it is spent, and if you need another license or a different license type, you will have to buy another.
The short answer is yes, buying a “L6 / PU” key from Getic will work either for a bare-metal x86 or a CHR. The license type between L6 and PU will be determined when you submit the Software-ID of the router to generate the key. If you are building a bare-metal x86 router, you will not get a CHR key, but a regular key.