License Problem - Out of Compliance

Overview

This article explains the behavior of a Dashboard Organization when the licensing is out of compliance, along with procedures to make it compliant and the best practices to avoid an organization shutdown. 

What Does It Mean to Be out of Compliance?

Meraki Licensing has a 1:1 device to license policy where each device claimed into the Organization must have an active license. When this criteria is not met, the organization will fall out of compliance. Any dashboard organization that has a device without an active license, will be considered as out of compliance. 

(See Meraki Licensing Guidelines and Limitations for more information)

Why Does an Organization Go out of Compliance?

An organization will become out of compliance when the organization is either:

• Under-licensed (has insufficient licenses to support the devices in the Organization) or

• Has reached the co-termination date (see The Science Behind Licensing Co-termination)

When either of these events occurs, the organization will fall out of compliance and will automatically enter a 30-day grace period.

What Happens During the 30-Day Grace Period?

The 30-day grace period allows the organization to continue to operate normally for a period of 30 days after the organization falls out of compliance. During this time, the organization will continue to function as usual.

Organization administrators will receive weekly email reminders during the 30-day grace period.

How to Regain Licensing Compliance?

In order to return to licensing compliance, you will need to do the following:

• Adding new license(s) from Organization > Configure > License Info page. This page will highlight the missing licenses in red color. If you have questions regarding which licenses need to be purchased, please open a case on the Support home page.

• If you are no longer using unlicensed device(s), you may remove the device(s) from the dashboard network.

If you do not take action to return the organization to licensing compliance state within the 30-day grace period, your organization will be shut down.

What Happens When an Organization Is Shut Down?

When an organization is shut down for non-compliance, the devices in the organization will be non-operational. The devices will cease to pass client traffic, but will continue to pass Meraki management traffic to check when the organization regains compliance.

The Dashboard Organization Administrators will only be able to access the License Info page and the Device Status pages. This will allow the administrators to add new licenses, or remove devices, if necessary. The administrators will not be able to access any other sections of the dashboard organization to make other configuration changes until the organization has returned to compliance.