You’ve been told you need to change your Meraki Dashboard licensing model from co-termination to per-device. What impact will that have?

Why would you need to make the change?

1. Because you need/want to run a device, site or network on a different timescale from the other parts of the organisation. For example you have a chain of shops, each with their own 3 or 5 year leases. You might want to have the kit for a shop licensed for the duration of that lease, and other sites have their distinct timescales. Under co-termination licensing, if you add some kit to the organisation and buy e.g. 3 year licenses for that kit, the license ‘juice’ wil get spread over the entire Meraki estate in the organisation, so your 3 years will get diluted down (or up) to a common expiry date for the whole organisation. If you use per-device licensing, each license can be applied to a specific device, so you can truly allocate those 3 year licenses bought for that branch to the kit in that branch, and when they expire, only that kit will be affected (or other sites can expire without affecting that branch). So this is especially useful for organisations with distinct sites (with their own timescales) or when you have a piece of kit you are intending to retire or replace. In this latter case, you can renew/extend the licenses for all the rest of the estate, but leave the retiring kit with a different lifespan.
2. Because you want to use 1 Day licenses.  You can now buy 1 day licenses for most Meraki, but you can only use them if you are in per-device licensing model. This sort-of makes sense. The 1 day licenses (which start ‘LIC-‘ and end ‘-1D’ e.g. LIC-MX85-ENT-1D), should be bought in multiples (e.g. x 30 for 30 days) and are designed to fine-tune or align expiry dates. But we often advise them for short-term or loan kit. So you might have an MX100-HW on loan for 3 months until your ordered MX67C-HW arrives. So you buy 95 (or whatever) x LIC-MX100-SEC-1D which will give you 95 days of licensed use of the MX100, and because you have to be in per-device licensing model, these 95 days of licensing will not affect your long-term kit.
3. Because you want to use Meraki MR Advanced + Upgrade Licenses with Cisco Umbrella integration. This is MR Advanced (LIC-MR-ADV-XX) or MR Upgrade (LIC-MR-UPGR-XX). 

Caveats

1. Changing from co-termination model to per-device model is a one-way change. You can’t revert back aftewards,
2. Changing from co-termination model to per-device model affects the entire organisation. You can’t have part in co-termination model and part in per-device model.
3. There is a bit more work involved in allocating licenses. It’s not just total devices vs. total licenses any more. You need to allocate each device its own license. (Or not – leave un-needed inventory unlicensed if you like)
4. If an organisation has an active Free Trial, it will lose the Free Trial when converting to per-device licensing.

BUT, on the plus side

1. Now you can use 1 day licenses and fine tune your expiry dates, down to the exact day.
2. You can renew licenses for networks or sets of devices separately.
3. Your whole estate won’t stop working when your clock for one piece of kit ends. Every device has its own license, expiration date, and license status.
4. You can use temporary or different-term licenses for sites.
5. You have 90 days to activate your licenses after you buy them.
6. Customers will have the ability to move licenses and devices between networks and organisations.

Will I lose money? Is it more expensive?

1. No. In fact because you can tune the dates of specific sites or kit to suit your business, you could save a packet.
2. The licenses cost the same (they ARE the same) as the co-term ones (you just apply them differently)

When I make the change do my old licenses get lost? What happens to my termination date?

1. No. When a customer is converted to the new licensing model, Meraki will take their current organisation expiration date and apply it across all the devices within the organisation. If there are extra licenses, an additional license will be generated with the same expiration date.
2. Current customers will not see a change in their expiration date when they convert to per-device licensing

How do I do it?

Use the Convert to per-device licensing link on your Organization > License Info page in your Dashboard.

Here are some Meraki resources:

https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Licensing/Meraki_Per-Device_Licensing_Overview

https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Licensing/Meraki_Per-Device_Licensing_Overview/The_Science_behind_Per-Device_Licensing

 

Let us know if you want to see more information or have other questions about this subject