Cisco Meraki is the only network appliance brand that we are aware of that prevents you from taking any pre-owned/used Meraki appliance like a firewall or switch and just factory resetting it and being able to use it for yourself. All Cisco Meraki devices are managed through their cloud portal and the local management is limited to just getting basic networking working.
Cisco Meraki’s devices are registered to an owners Meraki.com cloud portal and if registered/claimed in that portal, no one else can “claim” that device and register it in their own account.
This prevents anyone from just using any Meraki device if they purchase it used. Hence it forces companies to purchase new Meraki appliances.
NOTE: Working with Meraki support to see if they will help us with this process Meraki finally just said they can’t actually help us and we would have to contact the previous owner.
QUESTION: “CAN YOU BACKUP MERAKI DEVICE CONFIGS AND SAVE THEM LOCALLY TO IMPORT INTO ANOTHER ACCOUNT: “
- In talking with Meraki support, there is no way to backup, copy, save etc. a devices configuration in the cloud. If we were replacing the device in the same account it could push out the same configuration that way but there is no other way to get the config, so we would need to immediately reconfigure any device on our own once transferred to a new account as all previous configuration is lost.
HOW TO TRANSFER MERAKI DEVICES FROM ONE ACCOUNT TO ANOTHER:
- The best way to transfer the device according to the Meraki support tech that I talked to, is to follow the steps outlined here: Moving Devices between Organizations – Cisco Meraki Documentation and here, for uncalming: Adding and Removing Devices from Dashboard Networks – Cisco Meraki Documentation
SUPPORT/SECURITY LICENSES:
- If a Meraki device is unclaimed from one account and then registered to another account, any support/security licenses that were paid for will be lost and the device goes into a 30 day trial
Here’s the summarized step by step based on the above two articles in a simplified process:
- Sign in to the Meraki cloud portal https://dashboard.meraki.com/
- Select the network containing the devices, should look something like this:
- To remove the 8x APs, navigate to the device list page: Wireless > Monitor > Access points for wireless networks
- Click the checkboxes next to any devices that should be removed, for example:
5. Click Edit, then Remove from Network
- The device(s) will disappear from the list.
- To remove the 2x Cisco Switches, navigate to Switching > Monitor > Switches and repat the same steps above to remove them.
Once the above is done, the Meraki tech said we can then go into our account and using the device serial numbers, add them to the account.
We cannot transfer the licensing between accounts so anyone will need to re-license, there’s a 30 day grace period that should activate on the newly added devices though. All devices will need to then be reconfigured in the account.
This whole process can take 5 – 60 minutes to complete, as it will remove the device configuration, then re-contact the Meraki servers and re-register in the new account.