EOL licensing costs vs brand new device license costs

[SimonReach]

Our licenses for our networks are running out in a few months time so just costing up for another 5 year renewal.  All of our kit is running fine, it's all happy, never had issues so thought the cheapest option was to just license again and go.  However, the quote's we're getting back from 1 of our suppliers doesn't make sense unless Meraki are penalising us for sticking with old EOL kit.

As an example, hiding the exact costs, but.

1x MX100 Advanced Security license for 5 years (license only) = £12500.

1x MX85 + Advanced Security license for 5 years (license and hardware) = £6700

Looking at the spec differences between the MX85 and the old MX100, the MX85 is better in pretty much everything.

We've got some old MX64s as well around the business, upgrading them to MX67s, which we don't need to do, and adding a 5 year advanced security license is around £35 more expensive than just a license for the MX64.

[jimmyt234 · Accepted solution]

You absolutely want to go with the new hardware models at this point, the 64 & 100 will not run the latest firmware code either, so keeping it for another 5 years of virtually no updates doesn't make sense if you have the opportunity to refresh!

Your current devices also are set to go end of support some time in 2027: Meraki End-of-Life (EOL) Products and Dates - Cisco Meraki Documentation

[SimonReach]

Thank you, looks like we're definitely getting rid of all of our MXs then and upgrading at the end of the year.

[jimmyt234]

We have used cold swap method 1 as described in this documentation successfully many times when upgrading MX's: MX Cold Swap - Replacing an Existing MX with a Different MX - Cisco Meraki Documentation

[SimonReach]

We have smaller sites with a single MX64 so will try that method for them when upgrading to the MX67s.

Looking at Method 2, with the cloning and pre-staging, the presumption is that won't work for us because we have a combined network that contains Security Appliances and Switches and APs, so it'd clone all of the switches and APs as well.

Also, we have our DataCenter where we're possibly looking at brand new everything, so new switches and Appliances and moving the L3 routing to the switches.  My presumption is best way to do this would be to create a brand new network, pre-configure everything with the same IP ranges and then do the swap over like that?

[Mloraditch]

The licensing costs are based on the tier of product which is tied to the number of supported end users. MX100 is equivalent to the MX95 in the current generation. That's why you see the discrepancy in pricing. Also do note that as long as you are coterm you can migrate licenses on MX between generations of the equivalent tiers.

https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Licensing/Meraki_Co-Termination_Licensing_Ov...

So if you were getting a deal to upgrade early on your MX64s you could renew the same license and just have support change it once you get the new hardware. This would not work for the MX100 to MX85 change.

[PhilipDAth]

You should not extend a licence beyond the EOS (End Of Support) date for a device.

https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Other_Topics/Meraki_End-of-Life_(EOL)_Produc...

It just means you are paying for support - but have no guarantee of it.  Your will not be elgible for hardwarwe RMAs.  You wont get security or software updates.  It it stops working - bad luck for you.