Network Move / Network Portability Overview
Overview
The network portability tool allows you to move networks between organizations, including configuration and all devices in the network. This is designed for network administrators to re-organize networks as they see fit and allow for a better experience when managing networks across multiple organizations.
Network move can be used on appliance, camera, switch, wireless and combined networks.
Network moves execute as a background process and will generally complete in less than 20 minutes from the start, though this time is highly dependent on the number of nodes in the network.
Once complete, successful network moves are logged in the Organization Change Log (Organization > Monitor > Change Log) for both the source and destination organizations.
In order to balance functionality for all users, network moves may not be started immediately.
Multiple API calls to create network moves will be executed sequentially in the order received.
Prerequisites
There are a number of prerequisites for network moves. They include:
- The API user must have full organization admin rights in both the source and destination organizations.
- Networks cannot be a template network and must be unbound from templates before moving.
- All licensing must be unbound from the network before moving.
- The source and destination organizations must be on the same shard.
Networks with the following conditions cannot be moved:
- Systems Manager (SM) networks cannot be moved.
- Template networks or networks bound to templates cannot be moved.
- Wireless networks that have ever used billing on any configured SSIDs - this can be verified by determining if Wireless > Configure > Billing payout exists in the network; if this page exists, the network cannot be moved.
In addition, organization-level features like network administrators, licensing or policies are not moved. If you need organization-level settings as well, you can Clone Networks and Organizations in Dashboard.
Moving a Network
Once the prerequisites are completed, the ability to move a network is available via a two-step API that allows an administrator to move networks between organizations on the same shard.
- A network move is started by calling the Create Network Move API, which will queue the network move to run in the background. When successful, this API will return an ID for the network move.
- This network move ID can then be used with the Get Network Move API to see the current status of the move process.
FAQ
What is the impact on device operation during/after a Network move?
During the network move process, there is minimal downtime while devices are moved with their corresponding network. This allows the move to take place without any loss of device-specific configuration. Please note there may be a momentary disruption in operation during the network move itself.
Auto VPN works only for Meraki security appliances in the same dashboard organization. If you move a Meraki MX appliance that acts as an Auto VPN peer to a new organization, you must reconfigure it as a third-party VPN peer to maintain its connection to devices in the original organization. Use the article "Configuring Site-to-site VPN between MX Appliances in Different Organizations" as a reference to set up the third-party VPN tunnel.
Unexpected downtime can occur if you move networks that other networks depend on. For example, moving a Meraki MX security appliance network to a new organization can cause issues if it acts as a VPN concentrator for a Meraki MR access point network in the original organization. Review all dependencies before moving a network.
What isn't copied between the original and new organizations?
Meraki security policy does not allow copying information into destination organizations during a network move. The move operation does not transfer licenses between organizations, but it can move devices to an existing organization. You must reapply or validate licensing after the move is complete.
By default, recorded video in Meraki MV smart camera networks is lost when you migrate to a new organization. No historical data, including event logs and changelog entries for the network and its devices, transfers during the move.
Can network portability be used to move an organization into a new global region?
No, you must create a new organization in the desired global region for regionalization as outlined in the article Creating a Dashboard Account and Organization. You can link multiple organizations in the same region under a single login by using the same username and password when creating a new organization.