Subscription - License Compliance Cloud Experience

Overview

Subscription Licensing follows a 1:1 device-to-license policy.   Each device in an organization must have an active license or the network will fall out of compliance.  To ensure that you are getting the most out of your subscription, and to avoid interruptions to your service, you will have to regularly evaluate your licensing requirements.

Over consumption Compliance

In term base subscription compliance will be enforced if the number of devices added to a particular product class exceeds the licenses allocated to it.

In subscriptions, the goal is to minimize the impact on your entire network. In the event that you encounter non-compliance with the product class, you will be granted a 30-day grace period.  After the grace period automated enforcement actions will be triggered.  These actions will disable the management of non-compliant devices from the network using a Last in, First out (LIFO) methodology. With the LIFO methodology, members of the non-compliant product class will have management disabled from the network in reverse chronological order based on when they started consuming against the subscription.  Once back in compliance devices will be back to normal in chronological order.

The compliance status of one product class does not impact the compliance statuses of other product classes under the same subscription.

Ex:  If you are licensed for 20 MX-S licenses in your subscription and you deploy a MX-M device.  You will trigger a non-compliance event for overconsumption of a device you are not licensed for. 

In this example, the non-compliance action will only affect the device that triggered it. The device will enter a disabled management mode, while MX small devices and other product classes remain unaffected.

After the 30-day grace period, attempting to make any changes to this device will display the following message.

the device will work normally once it is back in compliance and licensed correctly.

Network Compliance

There are multiple ways in which a network can reach a state of out of compliance within Subscription Licensing. Once a Network is out of compliance all the devices within that network also become out of compliance.

• Unbound network - the network is either bound with an inactive subscription, or not bound to a subscription at all. This may happen when an administrator forgets to link subscription licensing during the 30-day grace period of a newly created network.

• Subscription Expired - subscription licenses are considered expired when the current date exceeds the subscription's end date. After a subscription’s end date, any networks that were bound to that subscription will enter a 30-day grace period.

• Subscription Canceled - a subscription is deemed canceled when you have taken specific actions to terminate the subscription. After a subscription is canceled, any networks that were bound to that subscription will enter a 30-day grace period.

• Exceeds Product Class/Device Count -  A network is out of compliance when you add more devices than you have licenses for. 

After the 30-day grace period and the subscription is inactive all networks bound to that subscription will come to a disabled management state.

Ex. If you canceled your subscription you will see that in Meraki dashboard, navigate to Organization > Subscriptions & license info section.

Clicking on a specific subscription will display all associated networks affected by its cancellation.

The compliance status of one subscription does not impact the compliance status of other subscriptions and their associated networks.

Disabled Management Expected Behavior

The following is a description of the expected behavior for the devices on networks that experience a disabled management event:

• Devices in the organization will preserve their last known license-compliant configuration prior to getting into a disabled state
• Administrators will lose the ability to configure the devices via Dashboard (GUI or API)
• Configuration data will not be displayed via Dashboard (GUI or API)
• Monitoring and health information will not be displayed via Dashboard (GUI or API)
• Devices will not have access to customer-initiated firmware updates from Dashboard (GUI or API)
• Customers will not receive support for devices