Overview
Licensing is required and represents the total cost of ownership (TCO) for the Meraki solution. Licensing includes: • Centralized management and network-wide visibility and control • Seamless firmware and security updates • 24/7 Enterprise Support and lifetime warranty for Meraki devices Cisco Meraki devices use the cloud for centralized management and control. Access to the Cisco Meraki cloud is based on a co-termination licensing model. Each organization is licensed for a certain number of devices, where all networks and their devices will expire on the same day, irrespective of when individual licenses were purchased. This co-termination date is established based on a number of factors including number of licenses and devices.
Licensing for MSP
For Managed Service Providers, licensing can be applied on either a per-customer basis or co-mingled between all customers. If all of customers reside in a single organization, all of their licenses will expire on one date due to co-termination. In this model, the managed service provider is required to purchase a renewal for all customer licenses with Meraki at the time of expiration. Therefore, Meraki recommends storing each customer's network in a unique organization, thereby enabling discrete expiration dates for each customer.
FAQ and Best Practices
Q: What is an ‘organization’? A: An organization is an administrative entity that can contain thousands of networks. A network is a group of Cisco Meraki devices that can be managed collectively (e.g. 5 APs at a store, or 1000 APs at a campus). An example of an Organization -> Network hierarchy is a retailer using a single organization to manage 100 networks, with 1 network for each of their 100 physical sites. Because licensing happens on a per-organization basis, there will be one co-termination date for all of these networks. More information on the organization -> Network structure is available in this KB article.
Q: I’m an MSP and have multiple different customers, but one organization. What are the implications of co-termination of licenses? A: If you’re using one organization to manage all of your customers, all of their licenses will expire on one date due to co-termination. Co-termination is designed to simplify licensing so that a customer only has to renew once, but for an MSP, we understand that there may be a requirement for customers to have different co-termination dates.
Q: How can I create and manage multiple organizations? A: Simply create multiple Meraki accounts at dashboard.meraki.com with the same e-mail address, and reset your password on all of these accounts to match. More details on this process are available here.
Q: What is the process to move networks and devices from a single organization to a multi-org view? A: Meraki has designed and rolled out a new ‘Multi-org’ view for the management of multiple organizations with different licensing co-termination dates. Moving from a single-org to multi-org view is a multi-step process and will require assistance from Meraki Support. One of our MSP Support Specialists will be happy to assist you.
Q: What are the immediate next steps for me? A: If you want to split up a single organization, contact Meraki Support requesting an organization split and an MSP Support Specialists will provide you with a list of instructions and will guide you through the process.
Q: What are the limitations of splitting an organization? A: There are several key limitations that should be considered before splitting an organization:
- Splitting an organization does not transfer historical usage data; e.g. Event Log and Change Log entries.
- Splitting an organization does not transfer end user accounts; i.e. they must be manually recreated.
- Combined networks will be uncombined after the split.
- Systems Manager networks cannot be split out of an existing organization.
- Networks cannot be split to existing organizations, only new organizations will be created.
- Networks that use, or have used, billing cannot be split out of an existing organization.
- The process is not reversible.
Q: How can I re-allocate/move licenses between Dashboard organizations? A. If using an organization-per-customer model, and you wish to transfer licensing from one organization to another, contact Meraki Support (you must be an org admin on both organizations). In a single-organization model, all hardware and licensing is shared in a collective pool -- so no changes are necessary to reallocate gear between customers.
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