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About JFurlong
JFurlong
Here to help
Member since May 2, 2019
a month ago
Community Record
11
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9
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Jul 30 2024
10:12 AM
2 Kudos
Unfortunately, unless things change at Meraki, I think you're going to be in the same position I was -- Meraki will insist that you have to renew your entire dashboard *including* the 10 CA-90 licenses that still have a year's worth of value on them. Fingers crossed that they've fixed this before your renewal in 2 years! (Honestly, I don't know how this hasn't become a bigger issue if everyone using CA runs into this out of sync licensing renewal issue)
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Mar 28 2024
10:46 AM
1 Kudo
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
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Sep 21 2023
2:45 PM
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.
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Sep 21 2023
2:04 PM
2 Kudos
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.
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Sep 21 2023
1:46 PM
2 Kudos
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?
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Aug 18 2022
10:48 AM
1 Kudo
You need the MR license in order to qualify for the warranty coverage; however, the warranty coverage period depends on the device and model as per the warranty page. We're so used to firewalls, switches and indoor APs having lifetime warranty coverage that it was a rude awakening to find out that the outdoor APs, indoor & outdoor MV cameras and the IoT devices all have fixed warranty coverage terms, even if they're properly licensed. Here's the page that details the warranty terms: https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Other_Topics/Returns_(RMAs)%2C_Warranties_and_End-of-Life_Information
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Mar 5 2020
3:57 PM
Meraki Now talks about the service level (24x7x2, 24x7x4 or 8x5xNBD) of the equipment replacement, but doesn't really spell out that it supplements the warranty length for the product. Is it really like the same SMARTnet level with regards to providing both an guaranteed service level *and* extending the warranty of a product?
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Mar 5 2020
11:51 AM
The outdoor Meraki APs have only a 1 year warranty, unlike the indoor APs that have a lifetime warranty. Is there a SKU that we can order to extended the warranty? In CCW, there's this SKU: CON-3ROB-MR84-HW listed as 3Y RMA ONLY 8X5XNBD Meraki MR84 Cloud Managed AP (there are similiar SKUs for other Meraki products) Can anyone confirm that this will work as it sounds and extend the warranty for the MR84 outdoor AP for an additional 3 years? We've asked our Meraki AM but they were unfamiliar with the SKU and the support documentation doesn't mention these.
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Aug 3 2019
10:46 PM
1 Kudo
OK, I broke down and asked Meraki support since the customer was pushing for this information in advance of deploying CA licenses. According to support, the upshot is this: - you can move CA licenses between cameras; or more precisely, you can remove a CA license from a camera and it's returned to the license pool -- you can then assign it to another camera - when you remove the CA license from a camera, all of the cloud footage stored is lost; on camera footage remains unaffected
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Jul 29 2019
11:29 AM
Thanks -- I have read that before; however, it only talks about how to assign a CA license to a camera, not how to reassign a license (presumably there's a link to remove a license and then you would have the "add a license" link show up on cameras again) nor does it talk about what happens with the blue line CA indicator for camera history. I'm assuming that it will be fairly obvious once I have the CA licenses and assign them to cameras; however, I have a customer asking me in advance how it will work and I couldn't find the answers to these questions. I get the impression that CA licenses aren't used by a lot of people.
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Jul 26 2019
5:46 PM
So in another question on the forum, it was answered that you can switch CA licenses between cameras in your dashboard as needed. However, what happens with the cloud archived footage when you switch the license to another camera? Is it deleted and unavailable and you start afresh with the new camera? Is it kept there and the new camera has the old archived footage available plus any new footage added? Does it make a difference if this is a camera replacing a CA licensed camera that failed (i.e the camera itself doesn't have any existing footage) or if you switch the CA license to an existing camera that already has extensive on-camera stored footage? Meraki also indicates that you can both play and export video footage; however, there's no indication how much footage you can export from the CA (if at all). Is it possible to export all/most of your cloud archive footage? Thanks!
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