Mixing hot spare MX?

[squidgy]

I'm jumping the gun slightly, but does anyone run different models of MX in a hot spare scenario? 

We have 2x MX64 at each branch, but I may upgrade to an MX84 or 100 in the near future as need has changed, ideally i'd like to do the following..

1x MX84 and 1x MX64 as warm spare.

Is this viable? Appreciate we'd have decreased performance in the event of a failover, that's ok.

[RafaelM · Accepted solution]

Hello @squidgy 

Unfortunately, that is not a supported scenario. Dashboard will not even let you add your spare MX if it is not the same model as the first one. Please check the note in this document to see this subject in detail:

https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Deployment_Guides/MX_Warm_Spare_-_High_Availability_Pair

I hope this helps!

[squidgy]

Any chance Cisco will increase the speed of the MXs across the board via firmware update? 100MB isn’t exactly good in terms of speed these days a bit old hat don’t you think? 

appreciate there needs to be differences between models but come on ..

[Inderdeep]

@squidgy : There are models which has high throughput. What speed requirements are ?

Check out the various models and the speed as per the models 

https://meraki.cisco.com/product-collateral/mx-family-datasheet/?file

[squidgy]

Thanks @Inderdeep I’m aware. I’ve been reviewing the documentation.

as you explained in the other thread. The mx64s have sd-wan speed of 100Mbps

I have fibre links of 200Mbps, Which isn’t exactly super fast by today’s standards, the mx64 in all other areas is sufficient for our needs but to utilise all the bandwidth available I have to go to a higher model. I think 5 years ago it was fine but the range could do with a bump in capacity across the board do t you think?

[Inderdeep]

@squidgy : Well i knew and understand your situation, day by day the requirement of the bandwidth increases and so is the old models retired and new models come with more CPU/Cores/Capabilities. The change on the existing model is not possible but may be the new model with the same price range will come to encountered and match the speed you need. 

I saw it always with the Cisco and of course Meraki is on the same track. 

[squidgy]

@Inderdeep 

at least the branch can use the remaining bandwidth for cloud services and the 100Mb SD-WAN link can be more managed for now for our needs, our licence is up in 2022 so I will go back to market then. 

thanks for your help.

[AjitKumar]

Hi @squidgy 

For a Warm Spare Scenario both the units of firewall in the network must of the same configuration.

We cannot have 1 MX84 and 1 MX64 as Warmspares in the same network.

[Inderdeep]

@squidgy : The secondary MX must be the same MX model as the primary. Warm spare functionality is not supported between different MX models