Wrong licensing? co-term license change to per device??

[ErickArteaga234]

Hi all.

A client asked me to validate the licensing of his dashboard, in summary, I saw in the licenses section, that he had a license acquired in 2017 for 1 switch and 5 AP, which has an expiration date for the end of April 2021.

However, the client acquired a new license to 10 AP's that it bought last year. The problem is that the dashboard shows "licensing problem". And both end dates are still in effect.

The current licensing type is (co-termination), would it be a good idea to pass it to Peer-device?

regards!

[DarrenOC]

If you switch to PDL then you’ll still require a renewal license for the switch which will expire on April 2021. I suppose you won’t have to renew the licenses for the APs at the same time so worth considering 

[Bruce]

Hi @ErickArteaga234, if the client is on the co-termination license model then there will only be one expiration date given on the licensing page, and this will be the date that the entire organisation licensing expires. The client is getting a warning because they are within three months of their license expiring.

You need to look at the term of each license that has been applied in the license history (bottom of the licensing page), to understand what has occurred.

My guess is the following, but you’d need to validate:

1. License acquired for 1 switch + 5 AP in 2017, for 3 year term
2. Before license expires in 2020, another license is added for 10 AP, with a three year term
3. As it’s the co-term model, the new license ‘tokens’ flow across all the devices, pushing the co-term date out by 12-18 months (depending on the switch model)
4. and so you end up with a co-termination date of April 2021

There’s more detail on how this licensing model works here, https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Licensing/Meraki_Co-Termination_Licensing_Ov.... Your client won’t have lost out on anything, the dates just haven’t occurred as they were expecting.

If they want to have different dates for different devices then they can move to the per device licensing (PDL) model, but it’s a one-way change, you can’t then go back to co-term. And as @DarrenOC said, they’ll still need new licenses as all devices will have an initial end date of the current co-term date. It may just mean that if they add devices in the future, the dates that the device licenses expire will be the full term from when they were applied.

[BrandonS]

This was explained nicely by @Bruce but I think the "licensing problem" message you see may be because of having more devices than licenses.  There should be two columns showing licensed vs active gear.  

EDIT: don't let me lead you astray, I think it may also be as Bruce wrote that is just showing licensing problem if you are within 90 days of co-term expiration date.