Cloud Archive License Renewals Confusion - Co-Term or Per-Device?

[JFurlong]

Meraki seems to have two minds when it comes to the Cloud Archive licenses; on the one hand, the total quantity of them and the number being used shows up on the Meraki dashboard along with the co-term date of that dashboard (in this scenario we're on a co-term dashboard model). Yet the licenses themselves have individual expiry dates that can vary between licenses depending on when they were first assigned to a camera. The Meraki documentation specifically says that the licenses are treated as per-device even when on a co-term dashboard (https://documentation.meraki.com/MV/Initial_Configuration/MV_Cloud_Archive😞

I have a customer whose dashboard expires in November 2023, but they have 7 x Cloud Archive licenses show an expiry of October 2023. They need to get 7 new Cloud Archive licenses a month before the co-term dashboard expires.

But this same customer has 10 x Cloud Archive licenses that don't expire until 2025. Presumably, we wouldn't need to purchase these until closer to their expiry date.

But in trying to come up with an order that will renew/add 7 new Cloud Archive licenses to replace the ones they need to update in October, the system resets the quantity of Cloud Archive licenses shown in the co-term license count, even though the CA licenses aren't co-term (or are they? Why does the documentation say they're not? Why does the Cloud Archive have individual expiry dates depending on their term and when they're assigned, if they're tied to the co-term date of the dashboard).

Meraki support is saying that they need to renew 17 x Cloud Archive licenses when they do a co-term renewal to keep the quantity of licenses in the dashboard the same as what they're using; but if the licenses are treated as per-device with their own expiry, why are they tied to the co-term dashboard and license count at all -- adding new devices to the dashboard doesn't affect the CA licenses' expiry date because they're not co-termed with the rest of the device licensing.

Does anyone know the answer to this? 

[PhilipDAth]

Wow, that is messy.  I don't think I want to sell cloud archive licences if this is the case.

[PhilipDAth]

Are the cloud archive licences available with the "day" option?  Maybe you could buy 30 days worth of additional licences, then renew everything at the same time.

[JFurlong]

This is in a co-term dashboard and the CA licensing doesn't (AFAIK) have a per day SKU to extend the licensing. AFAIK the per-day SKUs are only used in per-device dashboards.

From the documentation, CA licensing is treated as per-device, but the majority will be in co-term dashboards since that is the default. But the CA license expiry dates are never going to match to the co-term date since they don't start burning value until they're applied to an MV camera. My customer has 7 x CA expiring in October, their Meraki MVs/MRs expiring in November and the other 10 x CA licenses indicating they don't expire until February 2025. Yet Meraki Support says renew all 17 or there will only be the 7 that I need to renew now.

[PhilipDAth]

I think I would ask the customer if they could stomach the cloud archive being non-functional for a month.  Let them expire, and then do a single renewal.

Plan B - I wonder if you get 30 days of grace, and the cloud archive might just continue working anyway ...

Plan C - ask for a cloud archive trial licence.  Use it for 30 days ...

[JFurlong]

The problem is that there's no leeway for co-terming the licensing. If they go without the 7 x CA licenses for a month, or use a trial license (not even sure they offer those for CA), they're still going to have to -- again, based on what Meraki support said -- renew all 17 CA licenses at the same time as the MV & MRs, despite 10 of the CA licenses indicating they're valid until 2025.

Regarding, Plan B -- according to the documentation: "When a cloud archive license is removed from the camera, the Cloud Archive functionality will continue to work for 24-hours from the time of un-assigning the license. This is meant to allow changes to your cloud-archive retention period without losing the previously stored video."

Since the cloud archiving is a cost item for Meraki, since they're pushing the video to a cloud service (Amazon or the like), I don't think they're going to give 30 days grace. Anyway, that still wouldn't solve the issue of being told to renew 100% of CA licensing despite 10 of them not expiring until 2025.

[ShaunB93]

@JFurlong Checking in to see how you handled this in the end? I have 5 cloud archive licenses expiring in July 2024, 5 in September 2024 and 1 in October 2027... 
As you say, each license has it's own expiry date and I don't want to renew the September '24 and October '27 licenses early!

[JFurlong · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, the final word came back from Meraki: on a co-term dashboard, you need to renew for everything that shows on the dashboard *including* the MV Cloud Archive licenses, even if those don't indicate that they expire until a later date. So my customer had to pay for all 17 of their licenses for another year, even though 10 of them didn't expire until February 2025.

What I'm unclear on (as I don't have access to the dashboard) is if Meraki added 10 additional 1YR CA licenses that have a one year expiry date *and* the 10 that don't expire until Feb 2025 are still in there or if they reset the 10 that were already there to only be for 1YR from the date of the renewal. I'm very curious, but wary of pressing the customer to look into this as I'm afraid of the mess we might find.

It's insane and unfair and completely counter to how the documentation indicates that it works. They haven't updated the documentation after my case was handled, nor do I expect them to. I'm honestly disappointed in Meraki and how they handle this -- it's deceptive and I don't know why they either don't change the system to work the way the documentation indicates (CA licenses are 100% separate from the co-term date) or else roll them into the co-term system so that their validity is adjusted as the co-term date is affected by additional licenses being added.

The upshot is that I would recommend that anyone who wants to run Meraki Cloud Archive backups on their cameras to switch it to a per-device model as the co-term model will be nothing but headaches and paying for licenses again because of this ridiculous situation that Meraki refuses to address.

I got tired of tilting at windmills and just gave up trying to fight to get them to do anything about it; essentially now I just warn any prospective or existing customers about the way the CA licensing works and stress the need to have the cameras in a per-device dashboard.

P.S. my Meraki AM ended up adding additional discounting on the 17 CA licenses I had to renew to make the cost more palatable; however, this isn't a fix and I wouldn't rely on AMs being able to do this all the time