Advanced Security on vMX

[AlexCoste]

I just had a customer who couldn't claim a LIC-VMX-S-ENT-1Y in their Dashboard because their existing licenses is Advanced Security. I was under the impression that having vMX-ENT is not affected by other MX-SEC licenses in the Dashboard. Taking a look at the vMX datasheet, there's no mention of an Advanced Security anywhere.
Before raising a Support case I thought to quickly google if anyone had that problem before. The only thing that I could find was a Meraki Employee commenting last Wednesday on a thread from 2021 that vMX-SEC is now available to purchase as of 14th of January 2025.

I would normally be happy for new features, but I can't see any official announcements, any amendments in the datasheets, no social posts. You would expect some sort of announcement especially if the change affects the type of licenses you can buy (i.e. can't mix vMX-ENT with MX-SEC anymore).

I really hope that I'm wrong and there was an announcement. If that's the case, can someone confirm what is the difference between vMX-ENT and vMX-SEC?

Also, what happens with existing customers that are on MX-SEC who have previously purchased vMX-ENT - do they all get upgraded to vMX-SEC at no cost?

[ww]

Contact support

https://community.meraki.com/t5/Cloud-Security-SD-WAN-vMX/vMX-now-requiring-edition-to-match-org/m-p...

[AlexCoste]

Thanks for the link - it does give me a bit more context and will help me resolve the current issue.

Do you know if there is a datasheet for this new Advannced vMX license compared to the existing Enterprise?

[AlexCoste]

This note was recently added to the Meraki MX/Z Security and SD-WAN Licensing page to clear things up. VMX license will be required to match the MX tier.

However, that leaves a question of what happens if we have SDWAN licenses on MX, when there's no SDWAN license for the VMX? Will I need to choose SEC for VMX or am I free to choose between ENT and SEC in that scenario?

[Mloraditch]

I just saw this in the documentation digest and mentioned the verbiage in a reply but am also now concerned as this is a policy change without notice.

We have no need for SEC features on our vMXs and this basically doubles the price for all of our customers with no notice.

[GIdenJoe]

I just stepped into the same dogcrap.

We are a Cisco partner and NEVER received any heads up about this major impacting change...

We now quoted and approved a customer vMX not knowing this and can't add the license...

[AlexCoste]

Try Meraki Support to see if they would upgrade your VMX to SEC. I've had this issue three times already, and on one occasion the Support team was able to uplift the VMX to Advanced Security for free. Not sure if this is available for all customers though.

[Mloraditch]

I was told free conversions ended 1/31 when I asked for one after that. I made a bunch of complaints about the lack of communication and kept asking to talk to a manager and got a one time exception approved. Luckily we caught everything else in our pipeline.

[GIdenJoe]

Well we are actually suffering from that lack of communication so we deserve a free uplift as well.

[James_Howard]

I received an uplift yesterday after explaining the scoped SKU was the only one available when we quoted it to our customer.

[GIdenJoe]

Thankfully without much fuss they were able to upgrade me to the SEC license without additional cost.

[AlexCoste]

That's good to hear! I'm glad it was sorted.