Understanding Meraki Licensing

Summary

In a detailed virtual event hosted by Cisco's Learning & Certifications, experts discussed the intricacies of Meraki licensing, a pivotal component for managing Cisco's cloud-first networking solutions. Meraki licensing has historically presented challenges due to its complexity, and this session aimed to clarify the differences between Co-termination licensing, Per Device licensing, and the new Subscription licensing model. Each model has unique features, and the discussion provided guidance on choosing the optimal model based on business needs. This event was enriched by insights from Cisco's team members, Tanner Swift and Boris Doan, who also fielded questions from attendees, helping the audience understand the practical aspects of transitioning between licensing models.

Highlights

• Boris Doan and Tanner Swift led a well-structured session to discuss Meraki licensing, a complex but necessary part of Cisco's cloud-managed networks. 🌐
• The session demystified Co-termination licensing, explaining how it averages time across devices, leading to a single expiry date. 📅
• Subscription licensing introduces a flexible start date, different payment options, and allows for group licenses, adding financial and operational advantages. 💼
• Per Device licensing, not recommended anymore, raises concerns for some users, but Subscription offers a way forward. 🔍
• Cisco emphasizes flexibility with no mandatory migration, allowing users to choose the best licensing model for their needs. 🔑

Key Takeaways

• Meraki licensing is essential for using Cisco's cloud-first networking platform, which requires both hardware and cloud configurations. ⚙️
• There are three main licensing models: Co-termination, Per Device, and Subscription, each with specific features and drawbacks. 📜
• The new Subscription licensing model offers flexibility in terms of payment and device grouping, making it more adaptable for certain business needs. 💳
• Transitioning between models requires careful consideration of existing licenses and organizational needs, especially for those on Per Device licensing. 🔄
• Cisco provides support and guidelines for transitioning between models, emphasizing no forced migration, allowing businesses to choose what fits them best. 🤝

Overview

Understanding Meraki licensing is crucial for organizations using Cisco's cloud-first networking solutions. This session addressed the complexities of different licensing models such as Co-termination, Per Device, and the newly introduced Subscription licensing that offers greater flexibility.

The Subscription model stands out by allowing future start dates for licenses, varied payment plans, and lease options that cater to diverse organizational needs, potentially simplifying financial management.

Despite the complexity, Cisco is committed to ensuring transitions between licensing models are smooth and voluntary, focusing on customer preferences and operational efficiencies.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Webinar Details The chapter titled 'Introduction and Webinar Details' starts with the announcement that the meeting is being recorded, followed by Tanner Swift's welcome message. Tanner Swift, serving as the session's moderator, expresses excitement in introducing the speakers for the virtual event.
• 03:00 - 06:00: Speaker Introduction and Webinar Agenda The chapter covers the introduction of speakers and outlines the agenda for the webinar. It starts by mentioning that the virtual event will be recorded and accessible on-demand post the live session. Additionally, the playback will be available on YouTube for later viewing. These details will be shared in a post-webinar discussion on The Cisco Learning Network. The chapter also encourages audience interaction, inviting them to ask questions during the presentation.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Overview of Meraki Licensing In this chapter, the speaker welcomes participants to a webinar focused on Meraki Licensing. Participants are instructed on how to submit questions through the WebEx Q&A panel, with a promise to address queries during the Q&A session. In case of any audio issues, attendees are advised to rejoin the session or use the provided call-in number. The chapter ends as the host hands over to the first speaker, Boris.
• 09:00 - 15:00: Co-Termination Licensing Explained This chapter introduces the topic of Mari licensing, highlighting its complexity and the need for clarity. The speaker, Boris Doan, who is a Solutions Architect with the Cisco Customer Experience team, aims to address and resolve some of these complexities during the chapter. He has a background as a Systems Engineer at Cisco.
• 15:00 - 30:00: Subscription Licensing Explained The chapter titled 'Subscription Licensing Explained' involves a speaker with a varied background in service provider portfolios and Cisco. After some time away from Cisco, the individual rejoined through a platform named Moroi, working as a trainer and content developer, before returning to Cisco. The speaker expresses enthusiasm for Moroi, appreciating its resolution of issues faced by Network Engineers, highlighting their continued support and enjoyment of the platform.
• 30:00 - 35:00: Meraki Licensing Tiers The chapter introduces the topic of Meraki Licensing Tiers. It starts with the moderator introducing Nesli, a solution architect, who is present to assist with questions. Nesli briefly greets the audience and mentions her role in handling enterprise side solutions.
• 35:00 - 54:00: Licensing Demonstration and Q&A In this chapter titled 'Licensing Demonstration and Q&A,' the speaker begins by apologizing for a leftover title from a template and expresses gratitude to the audience. They remind the listeners of the Q&A and chat sections available for interaction. The speaker invites attendees to introduce themselves in the chat and share their location. The chapter sets up engagement through the chat feature, aiming to connect with participants globally.
• 54:00 - 60:00: Closing Remarks and Additional Resources In this closing chapter, the speaker, who is located in Barcelona, Spain, interacts with the audience by welcoming their comments and questions. They encourage participants to use the Q&A section for queries to facilitate organized communication. The speaker acknowledges participants joining from various places, including Carsten from Germany and Diego from Prague, fostering a sense of international community engagement.

Understanding Meraki Licensing Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 this meeting is being recorded hello to everyone and welcome to today's virtual event my name is Tanner Swift and I'll be your moderator for this session I'm excited to introduce a couple incredible speakers
• 00:30 - 01:00 for you today but before I hand the mic over to our presenters I do have a few housekeeping items to cover about this presentation today's virtual event will be recorded and made available on demand after the live session and the playback will also be available on YouTube for rewatch as well we will provide you with some of those details through a post weinar discussion thread on The Cisco Learning Network we'd also love to hear from you during today's presentation during the session if you have a question for our presenters you can
• 01:00 - 01:30 submit those through the Q&A panel here on WebEx where we will answer your questions as well as address them during the Q&A portion of today's event If you experience any audio issues we ask that you try to rejoin the session and if to no avail please use the Callin number displayed on the chat screen I'll post that once again momentarily so without further Ado I'd like to kick things off by welcoming our first Speaker Boris Boris right over to you hi thank you tener and welcome everyone to this webinar where we will be talking about
• 01:30 - 02:00 Mari licensing and understanding Mari licensing which has over the years become more complicated than I would like it to be uh and we will see why but hopefully some of that will um you know we'll we'll sort and resolve some of those uh things out my name is Boris Doan I'm a Solutions architect uh with Cisco customer experience team covering moraki um I first joined Cisco as um uh systems engineer although I was covering
• 02:00 - 02:30 service provider portfolio and then um after taking some time away from Cisco joined back through moroi and worked several years as a trainer and a Content developer then and then moved over back to Cisco proper as we call it with a with with with CX um I love talking about moroi I really enjoy how it resolves and solves the issues that we have as Network Engineers um so I'm still a big fan of the platform and there's no need for me to stop being a
• 02:30 - 03:00 fan uh and today with me I also have uh nesli as well who uh will be here in a standby and might be helping with with some of the questions nesle would you like to just briefly say hi um sure yes um hi everyone um I'm actually need to update the session I'm also a solution architect working um so I've been actually handling um uh on the Enterprise side C
• 03:00 - 03:30 Center thousand eyes and recently um C onei this is so my fault I didn't change your title I'm so sorry it's because like I used a template and it left over I really apologize um anyway thank you so uh just a reminder tenner already said this we have a Q&A section and the chat section um first of all if you find the chat section maybe just say hi to me and let me know where you're dialing in from today which part of the world I am based
• 03:30 - 04:00 in Barcelona in Spain so it's getting a bit late today for me but that's okay I'm glad to be here please do let me know where are you coming from I'm still like waiting for people to let me know uh but um you also um you do have a Q&A section so if you have any questions it's a bit easier um if you send your questions there and we'll start to get uh get those answered as well um hi carsten from Germany Diego from Prague
• 04:00 - 04:30 um Golf Shores Argentina Valencia Netherlands okay I I I really shouldn't be uh comp complaining about my longer uh you know my uh my late uh uh day cool so thank you everyone for being with us so let's move on so what I'm hoping that you will get out of this session is really three main things I want you to walk away understanding the different Miri licensing models there are two and a half unfortunately uh but we'll we'll we'll be uh we'll sort all of that out and
• 04:30 - 05:00 clear it out I I'm um hoping that you will be able to determine which one is the best for you understand whether you want to migrate from one to the other or not um and then also understand why is that migration process from one licensing model to the other if you choose to do so okay so as you all might know maraki is a cloud first networking platform it has Hardware across access access point
• 05:00 - 05:30 cellular gateways security appliances internet switches and point management as well and then the smart cameras too now unlike many other networking solution as I said this is a cloud first offering so all of the configuration management monitoring comes hand in hand with Mari dashboard which is uh which is a well a grade that you access through a web page and this uh large portion of the Mari um solution is hosted in the
• 05:30 - 06:00 maroi cloud and the hardware you have deployed as well as the the the the cloud maroi cloud work together to bring all of these amazing features now as for most products that does mean that you also have to have a license for the hardware that you have purchased and the license enforcement on moroi is really really strict because the devices a single Hardware device in itself is not the full solution there's
• 06:00 - 06:30 really no way of you to just you know configuring that device just by plugging into a port um that is not possible you really do you need to use the cloud portion and therefore this licensing enforcement is really well it's it's just you can't escape it um so you do need to have the license licenses for all of the devices they are the all an all inclusive license so you don't have to worry about some OD
• 06:30 - 07:00 um it comes with the access to decentralized management for networking for visibility for control uh seamless firmware and security updates are included with the license as well so the new features as they get released they will be added very often free of charge we do have some licensing tiers which we will talk about later but in large even if you stick to the same licensing the we keep adding new and new features to these devices and you will get them free
• 07:00 - 07:30 of the charge and also um well and also the way of do that these get delivered through you which are through automated firmer upgrades through the cloud makes this much easier the license also includes 247 Enterprise support maroi runs separate support from the rest of the Cisco as you may know um and um currently maraki supports two licensing models well two and a half uh it supports the co- termination licensing
• 07:30 - 08:00 model which is probably the one that most of you are on and we now have a new sub new licensing model which is called subscription licensing now there is a third licensing model which is called per device licensing um it is a licensing model that is no longer pushed we no longer recommend it um there are customers who are on it still but we don't actively encourage customers anymore to move over to it so let me kind of break this down
• 08:00 - 08:30 a bit well actually before I do that so there's still that chat option here that you kindly told me where you're from um could do you that does any of you know which licensing model you currently use on your organization it would be cool to see um you know kind of what comes up and what's the majority here but let me just kind of give you some history of this so that this is kind of a bit clearer
• 08:30 - 09:00 the quote termination model is kind of the base model it's the default model that you get assigned to when you bring up a merar organization um we um it's what most customers use they just to choose to stay on it now co- termination model as we saw had some drawbacks the the biggest drawback for me of a C- termination model is this inability for you to decide decide when the license is
• 09:00 - 09:30 going to start ticking so what happens on a co- termination model is that you place an order with um with Cisco with the partner and you will get your order confirmation number which you can use to then claim devices and licenses to maroi dashboard the license starts sticking at that point in time when you're on code termination there's no other option so the license will start taking usually before the the devices are even get to
• 09:30 - 10:00 your premises now what we say about this is that sure this is true but what happens is that you get the you get the ability to add the devices the licenses start configuring them at that point and whil the TR the delivery of the devices is is is going on you can configure everything have everything ready plug everything in once they're there and you're you're up and running so in a way you are using some of this time anyway so that was one of the B biggest drawback still what we were getting a
• 10:00 - 10:30 lot of complaints about and so we did have this understanding that we do need to to improve this in a way and so we came up with a new licensing model which is called per device licensing now per device licensing one of the great things about it was that you could choose and delay the start of when your license started and so you could postpone that up to 90 days and there were some other advantages to this per
• 10:30 - 11:00 Dev per device licensing model as well now however we thought that this would that this is a a really good compelling offer and what really happened is that not a lot of customers ended up using it sure people complained about this code term thing about licenses starting thicking but we just saw over and over that actually per device licensing is not much used so we're now moving on to a third licensing model instead which is the subscription licensing which just gives much more um
• 11:00 - 11:30 flexibility both in terms of how you arrange devices and licenses but also how you do your payments and um it's the subscription one makes a lot of sense from the business side for a lot of customers and it's the one that we now Envision that a lot of customers will be moving to eventually it doesn't make sense for us to keep three licensing models that is just to much so we don't encourage the
• 11:30 - 12:00 per device licensing model anymore if you are on per device licensing that is fine and you can stay on there we're still working out and figuring out how what the best transition will be to one of the two other ones but there's no need to panic at all um you you can continue using it as it is and um and once the renewal comes you can have a discussion with your your account manager about whether you're going to
• 12:00 - 12:30 stay on PR device licensing or want to transition to either Cod term or subscription licensing probably subscription licensing more more likely so hope so just to summarize this because it is quite complicated unfortunately but hopefully you understand the history of it and why we got got here we had Cod termination licensing the default licensing is still there a lot of customers will continue to use it we will see what are some of the features of cod termination licensing Ing and we now have
• 12:30 - 13:00 subscription licenses which you can choose to migrate to if your own code term per device licensing I'm not going to focus on it anymore in this session if you are on it that is fine it's just not something that we will be you know pushing for in the future and we will probably have a way of you for you to migrate to either Cod term or subscription most likely okay so the Cod term licensing with is which is staying and which you have an option of staying on if you just it is what you prefer the
• 13:00 - 13:30 but although there's this issue with when the license starts burning people still really like cterm as we have seen it and I think it is because of how simple it is it enables you to have all of your devices expiring on the same day regardless of when you added those devices and regardless when you purchase the licenses and this makes no sense when I say this but you will see on the next slide why that happens um the entire uh the entire organization is um
• 13:30 - 14:00 deactivated if you get out of the compliance so that's an important thing to know about cterm so if the the licenses expire for your organization there's a 30-day grace period where everything continues to function as normal but after the 30 days all of the organization is deactivated the devices will continue forwarding traffic but you will not be able to make any uh configuration changes but you know the 30-day grace period gives you a good um
• 14:00 - 14:30 you know good window to sort your licensing out in the meantime um okay so how the c-term licensing works this is a I said that regardless of when you purchase devices and how many and at what time and even if it was at different times and even the licenses of different lengths somehow all of your devices in organization will be expiring on the same day and this happens because we do
• 14:30 - 15:00 this averaging of time across all of the devices in your organization now I here have a really really simple example the simplest example possible to explain to you what is actually happening so let's say that in January you buy 10 access points and you choose to buy a one-year marar license so you have 10 access points lasts um for for 12 months you move on and and six months down the line you
• 15:00 - 15:30 decide to buy another 10 access points and get another 10 uh 10 um another 10 licenses which are a year long so in if we were not doing this averaging what would happen is that you would have 10 access points which would expire in December and another 10 which would expire in June so uh so you know we don't actually want that and we don't do that on C Cod term and instead of keeping track of these two separate set
• 15:30 - 16:00 of the devices we say actually you know what you have 20 licenses in total and we're going to average this time that you have left to give you one expiry time for all of the 20 access points so what you will get is the 20 access points which expire not in December as the first batch not in June as the second batch but in the middle of it which is in March and if you look at this kind of figure here which is showing you that time what really happens is that we take some of the time
• 16:00 - 16:30 of the new license and move it over to the old devices so that kind of part of the time kind of drops over to here and you have a single expiration date for all of these devices now this is the simplest possible example that I could have given you access points all have uh one single license regardless of the model so um you can see that this got get more complicated you have switches
• 16:30 - 17:00 of different sizes you have security appliances of different sizes this averaging will happen across everything so if you buy some access points and you already have switches time from access points will go to the switches as well um this is all weighted based on the pricing so obviously the the light the time of an mx450 which is has quite an expensive license will be much more rated than a license of a Mari sensor
• 17:00 - 17:30 which is I think the cheapest license that we have um there is a Miri if you Google Mari license calculator there's an online tool which you can use to um to add what are the devices you currently have and what's the expiration date and what you're thinking of adding and then the tool will calculate a new expiration date for you so it's it's a bit complicated but it um and and but people seem to really enjoy the fact
• 17:30 - 18:00 that you actually don't have to worry about having different devices expire at different times uh and that kind of came as a surprise to us as well and we kind of saw that from people not actually wanting not being particularly Keen to move to something where uh you know this is not the case so uh with that overview of cterm Licensing which most of you are on which is still a default we now move on to the Mari subscription licensing which is a
• 18:00 - 18:30 new subscription which is a new licensing model that we have the idea of this licensing model is to give a flexibility Simplicity and scalability um in this uh particular model what we do is in a way similar we group a group of other devices and we add a subscription to them so um a subscription is a group of licenses that are bound to the same uh to the same
• 18:30 - 19:00 terms so the same terms especially means the same uh expiry dates you can add licenses and upgrade as needed as well so we have a bit decoupled a bit this idea with the subscription licensing of when the expiry date and the amount of Hardware so there's now a bit more flexibility with the Cod term it was a bit difficult to figure out where things will land but here we actually have more
• 19:00 - 19:30 flexibility and you can say okay I just want to add some of the devices without changing my uh end date for this group um or I or or I want just to expand the time for my licenses and stay the the amount of Hardware the same so you have both options here so you can add licenses or you can change the end date without affecting the number of licenses either now here you you can see that in this example we have only one group but
• 19:30 - 20:00 actually you now can choose to have more than single group within the subscription so it's kind of like where in a c-term if you're in an organization everything all of the licenses had to be in this one single bundle one single group you can now divide licenses and devices into different licensing groups if you wish to do so in the simplest way in a way we still enable you to run this in a very simple way where you have everything in a single group you just
• 20:00 - 20:30 care about one ter quot one date where it's ending and that's it but there are there are situations in which this is not appropriate and where for example if you may have different budgeting needs maybe if you have organization which span you know multiple continents if you have different billing departments for example for different parts of your business then this idea of having one organiz where every all of the licenses
• 20:30 - 21:00 are kind of bundled together can be an issue so instead you do have an option of having more than one subscription group okay so that kind of enables you to budget a bit more easily uh have a bit more predictable expenses and have subscription autonomy there as well um we'll see that you also can do things like um static and dates and mixed feature here environment as well which we will talk about in in a
• 21:00 - 21:30 second um this will enable a bit more predictable cash flow a bit more of a flexibility with the operations and a bit of simplified license managements as well um there are some caveats about subscription eligibility in order to start the subscription licensing you can either do it on a brand new organization or on an organization where the licenses have expired so if you're
• 21:30 - 22:00 currently on the c-term and you wish to move over to subscription you need to wait for the cter your c-term date to expire and then you can move over to the subscription licensing and we'll see how in a second uh with the hardware all of the hardware is supported uh there are some exclusions around the regions so for example Russia B Russia India um China are not currently included
• 22:00 - 22:30 um you do there some of the benefits is that you do have a bit of an easy and manage with the subscription Keys you do need to claim a subscription key only once and there's an option of Auto renewal where you don't need to then keep claiming subscription Keys later on there's a flexibility where it's a bit easier to know your predictable dates of expiry now this is a really important one which is flexibility payments and this is kind of why we're calling this subscription Licensing in the first place There Is Now options to do different
• 22:30 - 23:00 payment methods and to pay for y maraki Services monthly quarterly yearly or all upfront now a caveat to this is that all of the purchases do go through Partners so maraki does not sell directly Hardware or licenses same as the rest of the Cisco and you continue to work with a partner so um we have enabled this monthly payments to be processed but whether that is available actually
• 23:00 - 23:30 depends on the partner that you're using there are some Partners which have not started which have not agreed to the monthly payment plans yet uh but there are many who have so you'll have to talk to your account manager and the partner to see if monthly qu quot yearly is available uh in your particular case um another really important one is that we have simplified some of the license cues you don't really care too much about that because you you're not ordering the license or you will get
• 23:30 - 24:00 your well you will qu you get your bill of materials with skes but you know it's it's something that your partner will care more about what you will care more about is that there's less of different types of licenses and that means that some of the license management is a bit easier and we'll see what of those licenses have been bundled together um now the claiming is only done once in the lifetime of a subscription and that is done by only this one subscription uh subscription uh
• 24:00 - 24:30 um subscription order claim number uh and once that is done you're you're set and that includes all of the licens that you have purchased if you during the time that the subscription is running have to make any changes you can do that all the changes you do need to talk to a partner about but the partner will be able to work with you on either adding new devices without changing the end date of the licenses or also changing
• 24:30 - 25:00 the end date to a further date if you if you wish uh wish to do so um so it's easy to add licenses to scale up if you need to easy to upgrade licenses or to extend the subscription as well um now this is a bit confusing with um with these um kind of timings as well right because we used to choosing what
• 25:00 - 25:30 is the the when you purchase the licenses on cterm or per device licensing we were used to knowing how how long the licenses are for effectively so you always have to choose one three five year license uh here with the subscription license you can still choose a particular term but then you can choose to Auto renew and if you do choose to Auto renew then that kind of happens for you automatically and you don't have to worry until you make some changes but
• 25:30 - 26:00 Auto R new feature is optional and we'll see a bit more about that later on so flexible payments so there is periodic payment options for monthly quot the annual or prepay so you can still choose for example to buy a 10-year license and prepay for it if that's what you want to do uh there is a flexibility in terms you can choose any monthly term between 12 and 120 months so not set 1 3 5 10 years you can actually choose 30 14 months if you wish to choose that and
• 26:00 - 26:30 then within that you choose your annual payment plan if that makes sense so an example would be okay I'm going to choose to do a 24mon license I'm going to choose to pay it monthly and I will not select auto renewal that means that I will have to then after my 24 months figure talk to my partner and do a new purchase if I enable auto renewal everything stays the same but after 24 months I get an automatic renewal for another year unless I actively reach out
• 26:30 - 27:00 to the partner to change something flexible start date uh is available this is a big difference from cterm is that you can request for the subscription to start up to 90 days in the future uh you can include licenses of all different maraki products into the same subscription and you can also include different licensing tiers so um licensing tiers on some products there are some features
• 27:00 - 27:30 which are divided into different licensing tiers and you can choose effectively you can actually have some of your devices running one tier and others running another uh however a single product all of the devices in a single product family within a single Network need to run the same tier okay so maybe you will have some switches which will be running essential in your network one but then you have switches
• 27:30 - 28:00 in network 2 which will be running an advantage license but if you do want to have this different different switches and different licenses they need to be divided within the different networks with a subscription license we are also simplifying some of the skus and this is what I was telling you before that what this means for you is that actually there is a less of a different types of licenses available so before in the switches in particular we used to have a separate license for
• 28:00 - 28:30 every single switch type so for example ms350 ms390 would have a different license well here what we have decided to do now is to divide is to group these so we have MS 100 licenses which are large medium and small Ms 200 which are large medium and so for and the same for ms300 Ms 400 so it's a bit simplified in terms of the number of different licenses that does also mean that you
• 28:30 - 29:00 can use it's the same license for ms410 and 450 so you can kind of interchange these as well this simplification has also happened across the MX security Appliance product line so rather than having individual license types for each different model we now have these um five different license groups Zed mxs ML and Excel and again interchangeable
• 29:00 - 29:30 between models uh in these groups and the same has happened for the mg as well where we previously have licenses for every model we now have a single mg license the remaining licenses which are Mt MV and Mr for Hardware they have not changed they were a single license regardless of model uh before as well now
• 29:30 - 30:00 um I also want to talk to you about the licensing tier as well because there have been some changings on the licensing tiers too this is how the c-term tier licenses look like so this is for co- termination it is also for fertilized licensing as well but we used to have um these are the only mod these are the only Hardwares which have different tiers that's the MS MX and Mr and Ms and Mr had two different tiers
• 30:00 - 30:30 which we used to call Enterprise and advanced uh where the MX had effectively three different ones now this has been changed and effectively here the Enterprise and advanced security license tiers have been combined into a single tier so this is kind of how the tier licensing looks like now they have also been renamed to the for the names to be more in line of what we see on the Catalyst side so we now call these tiers as essential and
• 30:30 - 31:00 Advantage um and so the essential for example will give you all of the switching features but the advantage licensing will add adaptive policy and extended routing table for support and models essential license now includes both the Bas SD when features but all uh Next Generation parel features UTM as well and then the advantage license includes maraki Insight adaptive policy thiz integration as the internet essential on the m are all the wireless features and then the advantage will add
• 31:00 - 31:30 to support for advanced policy as well as the umbrella DNS security integration um and this is the umbrella security included with the advantage license there is a full integration which for which you need to have a full umbrella license as well uh which then gives you a full sets of features this is a more this this is a DNS umbrella secur only on the Mr that's a side not a bit out of side of this
• 31:30 - 32:00 topic so a bit of a simplication here as well always just two levels now I do have another caveat here now the as you have seen here the advantage license includes Mari Insight Mari Insight was also included with the security secure sd1 license on the previous licensing model uh maraki Insight is a well it's a Mari tool which
• 32:00 - 32:30 is used for uh active application analytics so it's a tool that if you have a license for the MX will actively analyze the traffic at is as it is going through it and then give you information about the application performance help you figure out where any potential issue are rising for from within the application whether that's within your network whether that's uh with ESP or whether it is with the server provider of application now marac inside this is
• 32:30 - 33:00 a side note again does work really well in a conjunction for with thousand eyes which we do have support for as well you can run them a thousand eyes agent on the Mi thousand eyes runs active probing so where um Mi um Moroccan site will do passive analysis of traffic thousand eyes will do uh active probing so these two work really well together but talking about licensing here so there's no Chang in the fact that this higher
• 33:00 - 33:30 tier license include Maro in sight now what is different is that we used to have a separate moroi sight license which was stand alone so effectively there were under cterm there were two different ways of consuming maraan site you could either get Enterprise level tier or Advanced security tier and then get an add on Mara Insight license or you could have the secure sdw Plus which has maraki inside bundle within it now this is overly complicated
• 33:30 - 34:00 I think and maraki has agreed so Mori inside Standalone license does not exist going forward with the subscription licensing instead the only way to consume AA inside now is with the advantage license with the MX uh there's a question mirac description licensing would be like having different groups on con term licensing where each group Shar the same license and term date this is from Andre
• 34:00 - 34:30 thank you Andreas so much for this question this is exactly uh I this is a very good way of understanding it um it's kind of like having an option to have something very similar to c-term or if you wish have multiple have multiple groups where within one organization you have kind of different c-term groups it's a good way to think about it but the additional benefits of cot of these uh of these licenses as well with the
• 34:30 - 35:00 subscription licensing is this kind of payments and and auto renewals as well which is another kind of which is a separate issue right with with kind of which can help with uh with how you organize your finances I guess uh the we are still of course enforcing the licenses the 30th grace period still uh exists if you are out of compliance what would
• 35:00 - 35:30 happen is that that particular device that is out of the the compliance the last one that you added to organization that device only will be affected by the shutdown okay in the c-term licensing even if you just have a single device which is not license everything in your organization would be affected whilst on subscription liing day is not the case only the unline
• 35:30 - 36:00 unlicensed device um will be affected and we spoke about this already a bit there's two different ways to approach renewals you can choose to have Auto renewals or manual renewals uh either way this is something that you discuss with your uh partner and if you wish to do it they can set it up for you uh you choose the initial term and that can be between uh between 12 to 120 months and then if
• 36:00 - 36:30 you do choose the outo renewable at the end of that expiration period you will it will auto renew for another year with the same terms that you currently have um people may choose to do manual renewals instead because maybe you want to kind of have a look and maybe discuss again uh whether you need to discuss discounts again or any of those stuff then maybe manual renewals is the right way to do it the auto renewal would carry over all of the exactly the same
• 36:30 - 37:00 terms that you have before including the discounts that you that you have had so um if you are interesting into moving to subscription licensing this is kind of the timeline that you should follow uh t0 is the time where your code term expires um about four months before in theory you should and your account manager should reach out to you or the partner and have a discussion with you
• 37:00 - 37:30 about the subscription licensing the benefits and have a chat whether this is the right model for you or not and whether you're interested to transition or no um about two months before you really want to start getting your order all sorted and and making the order so that then you get that uh license key for the subscription now the license subscription key if you're Cod term you actually cannot apply it until your
• 37:30 - 38:00 license expires so if you try to add a license key of a subscription license to a c-term organization it will tell you that you're trying to add a non um well an incorrect license effectively so actually what you need to do is you actually have to let your uh license expire and that's fine because you have a 30-day grace period and then at d0 plus one is when you can claim your new
• 38:00 - 38:30 subscription license and with that you will be automatically switched over to to the new model now uh for per device licensing the complication really comes from the fact with the per device licensing you can have different expiration dates for different parts of your network and the issue is that all of them need to be need to EXP higher so that you can then claim the subscription
• 38:30 - 39:00 license now this so this can be a bit tricky and we're still figuring out what is the best way to get this um to to to get this transition plan for per device licensing so kind of stay tuned for that there are some workarounds which involve um purchases of one day licenses so that you get effectively get all of the licenses to expire on the same day it's not very pretty I think at the moment but the accounting team will help you to do that if there's a particular
• 39:00 - 39:30 need to get it done um but we're still working on trying to figure out a bit of a more um more elegant way to move from PDL over so stay tuned for that and so to kind of summarize all of this together the subscription licensing features so we have periodic payment options monthly quarterly annually or prepaid a more flexibility in terms of the monthly of the the initial term
• 39:30 - 40:00 which can be anything between 12 to 120 months uh end date is optional because you can have Auto renewal a start date is flexible as well which up to 90 days delay uh and you can have inclusive licensing which means that everything is in the single bundle uh there for you cool if there's any more questions do pop them into the Q&A I want to quickly show you how um this looks like in
• 40:00 - 40:30 dashboard uh as well and I'm G to move here first into this organization where well I have couple of networks but I just want to I I'm pretty sure that most of you will know this if you go under organization invent uh sorry license info this is and this is oh this is how the Cod term licensing looks like and this is
• 40:30 - 41:00 actually a new version but uh the old version that you may be more used to is something that looked like this and this really took me by surprise because I actually really think that this has been changed today because I was trying this yesterday and I don't think this inventory was was the same at all uh so I think there was like a change of like how event inventory and license info uh looks for subscription licensing as well so it got me a bit by surprise but here's the license for that you you see
• 41:00 - 41:30 here um the um it's so you can see here that the license model is cod termination license status is okay so that means I have all of the licenses count correctly and I have a single expiration date for all of my uh Network now notice here as well that I had to make a choice for which um license deer I'm us using for the MX and Mr and I had to choose one for all of my
• 41:30 - 42:00 organizations so I didn't have the option to kind of mix between different ones uh these are just the counters we have like incredibly High counters here but if you were to add um an a device that you're not licensed for then you would be out of license compliance immediately get into a grace period and have 30 days to either remove that device or add the additional license now if I move over to to my other organization this one has the
• 42:00 - 42:30 subscription and license info here instead and here you can see that I actually have two different I had two different subscription groups I actually chose to cancel one of those so this is a pretty simple case right where I only have one group and within this one group I have chosen to add all of my networks so if I click on networks here I will see that all of the networks are in my single sub Branch subscription name now if I wanted to add an additional group I
• 42:30 - 43:00 can do that and add the networks into it so if I wanted some way to manage these differently that is absolutely fine and I could I could do that now I also have something that is out of compliance we'll see in a second what that is so if I click on my sub Branch now the one thing that I really want to point out to you here is this part here with the details whenever you want something changed to your license you still need to go work with a partner so a partner can help you to
• 43:00 - 43:30 either add new devices or to change the exper expiry date or to enable or disable auto renewal the information that the partner will need to do that is the subscription ID which you get here so this is what the partner will be asking you for here you can see the subscription utilizations across uh all of the networks as well and I can click here on view details to see what is it that I um
• 43:30 - 44:00 am not having subscribed so I can see that I have added two ms300 devices um that should well two ms300 devices which will have the ms300 large device the grace period is ending on October for these so on October 6th I will no longer be able to manage these devices so I can export this information and then share with the partner um as well there as
• 44:00 - 44:30 well and I want to close this as well now and the other thing that I can do here as well is I can go across the different um well the different product families and I can see which of these devices I have or which of the the licenses what all of these licenses cover Which models what is the usage of these licenses as well and here in the switching I actually can see that I'm using two additional on which I do not have can see the details here as well I
• 44:30 - 45:00 can see what other licenses I have and that goes across all of the same there is a question if I can move devices from one group to the other uh and the subscription and date of the group is recalculated that is actually a really good question that I actually am not sure about um I think now my assumption would be that you would probably need to get help
• 45:00 - 45:30 from Iraqi support in order to do that because I don't think there's an easy way to do it yourself but I'm not entirely sure we do have a community page which we will share at the end so um I'll make sure to add to find this out for you and then add the add the question or add the proper answer for you uh in the community and we'll share those afterwards but that's a really cool question I haven't talked about before um okay so that's everything that I wanted to share with you um tenner are
• 45:30 - 46:00 there any more questions one actually before I do that there's one other question one other thing that I do want to just quickly point out to um Cisco also offers Enterprise agreements for purchases now Enterprise Agreements are available for maroi as well and if you do choose an Enterprise agreement coming soon they will be using subscription license in the background um the
• 46:00 - 46:30 Enterprise agreement is a bit more over encompassing because in an Enterprise agreement you can have well it's a it's a purchasing agreement not for just one type of Cisco product so not just for moroi so you could also there have Catalyst devices WebEx um everything right so these are a bit more over encompassing so I just want to kind of leave you with that that Enterprise Agreements are available for Mori as well if you're interested about that talk to your account manager and they can take you through the The Cisco Enterprise agreements and what the
• 46:30 - 47:00 benefits and uh are of those as well yeah I do have a couple uh questions for you here uh Boris and they and they are kind of on the Li on that uh licensing side of things that we talked about those last uh couple slides um how how does moroi handle licenses for organizations with a mix of old and new devices and do I need to buy a separate subscription for each um well that that that is
• 47:00 - 47:30 absolutely fine the devices I mean all new devices they can all be within a subscription regardless of they it's a c-term or PDL or subscription uh one one question does pop up is around end of support devices um which maybe is what this question is also referring to uh so end of support devices continue to function you do still still do need to have them licensed um the license does include um
• 47:30 - 48:00 the RMA support as well like there's a guarantee to the license right unfortunately the guarantee and the RMA no longer are valid for end of support Hardware um so there's that caveat but if you are for some reason running an of support devices you really do want to look at upgrading them but they they they will run great thank you uh let's see here uh can I transfer licenses between
• 48:00 - 48:30 different organizations or subsidiaries so this is a really good this is actually a really good point a really good caveat of why if if you have a need to move organiz um licenses between organizations you may need want to hold off from subscription licensing and the reason is that we currently don't have a way of easily moving the licenses between different organization on
• 48:30 - 49:00 subscription licenses there is something that is on the road map uh but currently it is not possible I'm sure there's a ways of like workarounds in exceptional circumstances but it for all intended purposes moving licenses between organization of subscription licenses currently it's not supported but should be supported in the near future beautiful beautiful um do in that uh what are the consequences of not renewing the
• 49:00 - 49:30 licenses on time we well we spoke about this couple of times so there's a 30-day grace period uh on c-term if you just have one device that is out of compliance everything will be affected you won't be able to manage any of the devices on subscription licensing it will be just that one device or a few devices affected that you will not be able to manage after the 30 30-day grace period which still exist uh what happens if moroi changes its licensing structure during my active
• 49:30 - 50:00 subscription term will I be forced to switch we haven't been forced we we haven't forced anyone to move from cterm and that's why there's so many people on cterm still and PDL partly because of that didn't didn't didn't take off so it it it is fine if you don't you know if you don't want the hustle of moving if you you know if the subscription license doesn't speak to you currently we don't
• 50:00 - 50:30 currently have an intent of moving people over we will be encouraging people to move over uh but we will not be mandating that anytime soon uh for me on my end that does it uh all for the Q&A at the moment uh we will will leave this Q&A chat screen open if you do have a question here for Boris um here is here is a question from Jerry how is expiration managed if you have devices in different time zones for
• 50:30 - 51:00 example EU Asia and us um so the the that's a really good question it will be um so for for the c-term licensing I believe it will all be on UTC time that this will that that this will occur um if I'm not m mistaken for that um but you really
• 51:00 - 51:30 shouldn't get yourself in a in this trouble where you're really like running close to uh to to to to to being in in in that issue no another good question though if you have multiple devices um for sure uh as we do wind down here Boris is there anything else that you would like to cover here before we do wrap up uh I don't think so I hope that this was um
• 51:30 - 52:00 informative for you all I do you know I one one thing that I find know I I am never as a network engineer I'm never this is not my favorite topic I have to be honest with you but it is it is an important topic um and with maraki in particular the reason why I really like maroi is because of the Simplicity that moroi um brings to the network and I do appreciate that having three different licensing models is to is is
• 52:00 - 52:30 kind of confusing uh and um but I hope that you kind of understood why we got to this point historically and that kind of is just kind of how how things happened and that there's been good reasons for these uh changes to occur and there's a good reason for these transition periods that we're currently in where there's three different licensing models and and going forward uh in the right time we will be looking
• 52:30 - 53:00 to simplifying this so that you know we don't have to worry too much about all these different moduls as well I want to thank you Boris for your time today and to all of our attendees as well thank you so much for joining us and to the whole team for joining um and bringing your n uh knowledge to the Cisco Community today uh as mentioned if you do have an additional question for Boris we'll keep that Q&A window open for a couple more moments for even more tutorials demonstration and future webinars please visit the Cisco Learning Network I've placed a link in the chat
• 53:00 - 53:30 screen for you it is a post weinar discussion thread for today's event uh includes some of the resources that Boris discussed as well as options to catch today's recording um and then you can ask any follow-up questions on that thread about this session as well your feedback is important to us and at this time you'll be directed to a post webinar survey please take a couple moments to participate in that helps us plan out some f fure sessions once again we thank everybody for joining us today and we will see you next time on The
• 53:30 - 54:00 Cisco Learning Network