MX65 upgrade to MX84

[RumorConsumer]

Edit -Whoops changed to MX from MR.

Hello! A friend is giving me a MX84 from his business (he upgraded). Its unclaimed and ready to go. I saw in the warm spare docs the HW has to be the same. This won't be the case and I only have one MX license.

I see this doc - https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Other_Topics/MX_Cold_Swap_Replacing_an_Existing_MX_with_a_Differ...

And Id like to do this with as little reconfiguration as possible. Any veterans out there who can tell me the *actual* way to do this, get my config copied over (im just doing this for the higher user count) without having to buy another MX license? 

[AjitKumar]

Hi @RumorConsumer 

I believe this may not be possible.

For every MX Model there is a different kind of License. MX65 License cannot be used for MX84.

You are right for warm spare one should have similar unit of hardware. However you do not need 2 Licenses for HA as the mode is Active - Standby. Hence 1 License will do. Having said that in your case this may not be of any help as the Hardware's are of 2 different models.

Regarding configuration backup I do not see much options available. The thread you are referring to shares appropriate information while replacing MXes.

I believe @PhilipDAth had a script to download the configuration. I am not very sure though.

[RumorConsumer]

Awesome. I mean the good news is that my config is not complex. I don't do any VLAN or anything special. I just have 2 networks - main and guest with their passwords and corresponding content filtering selections. Is all that stored at Meraki and would be downloaded if a new MX devices were added? I guess what I am wondering is *what* exactly would need to be reconfigured. 

[jdsilva]

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@RumorConsumer wrote:

I see this doc - https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Other_Topics/MX_Cold_Swap_Replacing_an_Existing_MX_with_a_Differ...

And Id like to do this with as little reconfiguration as possible. Any veterans out there who can tell me the *actual* way to do this

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That is the actual way to do this... Why would you say it's not?

You can't do warm spare with different hardware. There's no way around that. 

As @AjitKumar says you will need a new license as the MX licenses are model specific. 

If you want to create a new network just copy the settings from your existing when you create the new network. But that's also in that KB doc.

[BrandonS]

As stated, the warm spare method is not a possibility, but I am pretty sure I recall a few years ago having a customer do a similar upgrade and support was able to manually reduce their existing, lesser model license to the appropriate length based on price difference of the higher model.  Something like, 3 years left on MX64 changed to 1 year for an MX84.  You could call support and ask if that is possible.  It would seem fair..

[hoempf]

I know this is possible if you have to adapt MX licensing (advanced security vs enterprise). You can basically "cut the enterprise license in half" and have an advanced security license. I've done this on a few occasions (by opening a ticket).

But if that works between models it would be interesting to know 🙂

[CJ_Ramsey]

No, you cannot 'upgrade' a license between different models and get a pro-rated time period, like when going from Enterprise to Adv Sec. You would need to purchase a new license for the MX84.