MS130 Licenses

[KarstenI]

Hi all,

What is the benefit of the Advanced License compared to the Enterprise License for the MS130 (non-X models)? Obviously, it's not Adaptive Policy or more OSPF routes like on the high-end models. Any idea or reference?

Have a great weekend, Karsten

[RaphaelL]

Great question. By Advanced Licence do you mean the Advantage licence ?

Even https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Licensing/Meraki_MS_Subscription_Licensing doesn't provide any answers. 

All the features from the licence are only for the MS390 / C9300 

[KarstenI]

no, really the legacy differentiation ENT vs. ADV:

[RaphaelL]

Haven't followed all the licence change ( and tbh I'm really lost in all the changes made in the past year... ) 

So there is ENT , ADV and Advantage ?

[KarstenI]

• Enterprise and Advance for the classical licensing
• Essentials and Advantage for the new Subscription Licensing

[Brash]

Yeah, no idea...

I did join webinar a few weeks ago for some new MS features that by the sound of it were targeted towards the advance license only.

From memory one of them was the smart packet capture features.

I may well be wrong though.

[Mloraditch]

I don't believe there is any for regular MS130s, it just exists because they simplified the number of licensing SKUs. I can see how it would be confusing during the sales process

[GreenMan]

Advanced / Advantage licences don't hold any meaning for the majority of MS switches;   they don't support the Adv features.   MS130 is the only exception;   130X and 130R have Adaptive Policy capabilities.   The traditional SKUs for co-termination / PDL licences for all the older MS models hold a clue;   these are all Ent only.

[KarstenI]

But this is about the regular 130 (non-X, and what I forgot to mention initially, also non-R). And I really don't want to believe that Meraki takes double the money for nothing ...

[Ryan_Miles]

Today, ADV only applies to X models. But if an org contains MS390 or C9300 ADV licenses it means the org license level for switches is now ADV and then MS130 ENT licenses won't can't be added.

[KarstenI]

Does this also mean that the customer has to buy the ADV licenses for the "normal" 130 if they plan to use Adaptive Policy later on the C9300 somewhere in the same organisation?

[Ryan_Miles]

My understanding is yes

[KarstenI]

Ok, so for Co-Term we can name this the "Big Al" Licensing ...

But for Subscription Licensing it is possible to have different feature tiers per subscription, right? I could have a subscriptions with MS Essentials for network one and a subscription with MS Advantage for network two, right?

[PhilipDAth]

Under Organization/Adaptive Policy, you enable it per network.  Once you enable it for the network, every switch must have a licence for Adaptive Policy.

The Licencing page does not have a section for switches.  It is not a org wide style feature licence.  Just per network.  I'm only talking about switches here.

[KarstenI]

Am I right that you only have the Advanced Licenses for the switches in your "Philip-Home" network? That would mean it should also be possible with Co-Term to buy the ENT for most networks and ADV for the one network where Adaptive Policy should run.

[PhilipDAth]

That is correct.

[Ryan_Miles]

The simple presence of a MS390 ADV license moves the org to require ADV for any MS130s.

I have a MS390 ADV license. My MS390 isn't even in a network nor is AdP enabled on any network. I've never enabled it. But since the MS130 ADV license roll out a few weeks ago this it changed all my MS130s to now needing ADV licenses and my org is out of compliance.

[GIdenJoe]

Important thing is that if you want to use MS130's for adaptive policy, you will need to use the MS100-S/M/L advantage licenses which are only available in the subscription licenses.

Also important that you can mix licenses between different networks in an org but you need the same license tier within a network.  So if ETA or Adaptive policy is a design goal for a specific network, make sure all your switches and access points in that network get an advantage license tier.

I have also noticed that C9200 switches can have an MS200-S/M/L advantage license meaning that if they are now in Catalyst mode you need this to use the advanced features and if hey would come available to convert into Meraki management mode in the future they will also support adaptive policy.  The thing is that you can't mix and match license tiers within a network.  This makes sense because you can only enable adaptive policy if your entire network contains devices that support it.

[KarstenI]

I still need to find a statement for this in the documentation so that the customer is confident in this solution.

[GIdenJoe]

Agreed, I come to the conclusion by piecing together multiple documents.  It should however be good if Meraki would place this into one comprehensive document.

[PhilipDAth]

>which are only available in the subscription licenses

I don't believe this bit to be correct.  I have a co-termination licence and a MS130-CMPTA licence for an MS130 with Adaptive Policy enabled.

[GIdenJoe]

Hmm those were never mentioned in the datasheet maybe up until now.

[PhilipDAth]

@Ryan_Miles , could you perhaps ask the MS product manager if they can clarify the licencing requirements for Adaptive Policy please.  There appears to be a lot of confusion in the market as to what is required to properly licence an org full of networks.

It makes it a bit scary to quote up.

[Ryan_Miles]

I think it simply boils down to Adaptive Policy requires Advanced licensing  be it on the MS390, C9300-M, or MS130X/R.

The wrinkle is that with the introduction of the MS130 we moved away from model specific licenses to general family licensing. With this there is no distinction between X and non X models from a license perspective. Example, any 8 or 12 port model is LIC-MS130-CMPT-xY (enterprise) or LIC-MS130-CMPTA-xY (advanced). Same for 24 and 48 port models.

And because co-term enforces a single license tier for the org if any MS390 or C9300-M advanced licenses are present the org is now advanced. And with that any MS130 now needs to also be advanced. This is true even if no MS390s or C9300-Ms are in the inventory or adaptive policy is enabled.

If any changes are made to the way this works I'll be sure to update this thread.

[GIdenJoe]

This makes the case for subscription licensing even stronger since you don't have that org wide switch license tier enforcement anymore.  This is what the documentation says about subscription licensing.

[PhilipDAth]

This doesn't seem right to me - when you enabled Adaptive policy on a network by network basis.  If it is licenced org wide - why just enable it on every network?

[GIdenJoe]

Hmm, I'm not sure if you're getting what I mean.

So for example:  You have 5 branches.  But only in 2 of them you have switches capable of running adaptive policy.  So you could enable adaptive policy on those 2 branches and would need advantage licensing for all the switches and AP's in that network.

It does not have to be a full end to end story.  Especially in a brownfield scenario since advantage licensing is well at least double the cost.  I do see the use case for adaptive policy but the cost of advantage licensing is still a hurdle when the advantage license only grants 2 features on the switch side.

[GreenMan]

This ask for clarity has been passed up to the BU

[GIdenJoe]

This was the reason why I also thought about the C9200's being able to be licensed by subscription licenses.

It's in the dcloud demo.