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 needs to be a Full Organization admin on both the source and the 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.
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 is currently only for Meraki security appliances in the same dashboard organization. If Meraki MX appliance acting as an Auto VPN peer is moved to the new organization then it will need to be reconfigured as a third-party VPN peer to maintain its connection to devices in the organization it was moved from. The article Configuring Site-to-site VPN between MX Appliances in Different Organizations can be used for reference to configure third-party VPN tunnel.
There can be unexpected downtime if networks are moved to one organization that networks in the other rely on. For example moving a Meraki MX security appliance network to a new organization while it is configured as a VPN concentrator for a Meraki MR access point network in the original organization. Plan accordingly when moving a network to ensure all dependencies are accounted for.
What isn't copied between the original and new organizations?
The most impactful portion of a network move is that under Meraki security policy, we do not copy information into destination organizations. This move operation does NOT move licenses from one organization into another, but can be used to move devices from the original organization into an already established organization. Licensing would need to be reapplied or validated and in compliance after the move is completed.
In addition, by default, the recorded video in Meraki MV smart camera networks will be lost if they are migrated to a new organization. Note that no historical data will be transferred for the network(s) being moved; this includes event log and changelog entries for a network and the devices it contains.
Can network portability be used to move an organization into a new global region?
No. For regionalization, a new organization would need to be created in the desired global region, as outlined in the article Creating a Dashboard Account and Organization. Note that multiple organizations in the same region can be linked together under a single login by using the same username and password when creating a new organization.