Hi guys, I have some customers that want to understand the CNMaestro X Licensing
Is licensing per device ? Ie if I have 2x Force 180’s do they need to buy 2x MSX-SUB-TX licenses ?
What happens to the device if the license expires ? Does it continue operating normally and can it still be locally managed but not cloud managed or does it do a Meraki and switch itself off completely ? I hope its not the latter because I’ve had an entire site switch itself after a bounced payment to a MSP years ago.Some of these customers have been using cnMaestro now for a while and these expenses were not in their budget cycle so they have to understand what is happening.
Are there automatic ie 30-60-90 day reminders that a license will expire ?
Some of the documentation is a bit confusing for cnPilot E series AP’s.On the PDF it says Tier 0: cnPilot Wi-Fi APs and cnMatrix switches whilst in menu help says the following Tier3 - cnPilot Enterprise (ePMP Hotspot)|1000 Hotspot|Enterprise Wi-Fi|All E-Series and XV-Series Access Points. From what I can tell an E410 falls into Tier3 category if I look at their licensing portal.
Are there any plans to sell products with a 1Y/3Y/5Y entitlement key on the same SKU, so that I don’t have to deal with CapEX and OpEX finance people on a simple AP or P2P buy ?
Yes, licensing is per device. But to upgrade your account from cnMaestro Essentials to cnMaestro X, you will need to have the license (slot) for each device as per device tier classification.
Since I introduced a new term called slot, let me quickly explain you to it. As you have already gone through the datasheet, so let us take an example of Enterprise Wi-Fi APs. Suppose you have N number of E410 APs in the cnMaestro account, then you will be ordering an Entitlement with part number – MSX-SUB-T3-1 of quantity – N to upgrade your account to cnMaestro X with 1 year of subscription. Once you activate this particular Entitlement ID against your account, your cnMaestro account will be provisioned with N slots belonging to Device Tier3. Every device in your account will occupy one of the N slots, and the account will be upgraded to cnMaestro X.
Once upgraded, your account will continue to function like cnMaestro X as long as you have at least one device with an active subscription.
So in the case where few devices are no more mapped to active slots (slots belong to expired subscriptions), these devices will no more be managed from cnMaestro, but they can still be locally managed.
Yes, you will have email notifications every 90-60-30 days before a subscription gets expired.
Thanks for pointing out the ambiguity in the datasheet regarding Tier0, and we will correct it.
I didn’t quite follow your last question, but yes, you can purchase the same SKU with 1/3/5 years duration under the same entitlement or different entitlements. But once you activate an entitlement, all SKUs will be activated, and there is no provision for partial activation.
I’m sorry but reading this thread i have a question.
Maybe i did not understand very well but… if i have 12.000 devices in my network (PMP450, PMP450i, PMP450m and many many many SM’s) i need to buy a license for 12.000 devices?
For exemple:
MSX-SUB-T2-1 and 30 dollars subscription will be 360.000 dollars for 1 year?
In the datasheet i have understand that 30 dollars was for 1 year subìscription per devices like cnmaestro
Yes, you need to buy the license for all devices in your account except for devices (cnPilot Home Wi-Fi APs and cnMatrix Switches) mapped to Free Tier (Tier0). Just elaborating by taking your example, let us say you have 400 APs and 11,600 SMs in your account, then you will have to buy Tier1 (SM devices) subscription for 11,600 and Tier2 (AP devices) 400. You can choose any duration out of 1/3/5 years for these subscriptions.
Here is the list of all SKUs available for Tier1 and Tier2:
Part Number
Tier
Description
MSX-SUB-T1-1
T1
cnMaestro X for FWB : Includes SMs. Advanced management and includes CC Pro for Tier 1; 1-year subscription / Tier 1 device; Tier 1 devices include FWB SM
MSX-SUB-T1-3
T1
cnMaestro X for FWB: Includes SMs. Advanced management and includes CC Pro for Tier 1; 3-year subscription / Tier 1 device; Tier 1 devices include FWB SM
MSX-SUB-T1-5
T1
cnMaestro X for FWB: Includes SMs. Advanced management and includes CC Pro for Tier 1; 5-year subscription / Tier 1 device; Tier 1 devices include FWB SM
MSX-SUB-T2-1
T2
cnMaestro X for FWB: Includes FWB AP, PTP and IIoT. Advanced management and includes CC Pro for Tier 2; 1-year subscription / Tier 2 device
MSX-SUB-T2-3
T2
cnMaestro X for FWB: Includes FWB AP, PTP and IIOT. Advanced management and includes CC Pro for Tier 2; 3-year subscription / Tier 2 device
MSX-SUB-T2-5
T2
cnMaestro X for FWB: Includes FWB AP, PTP and IIOT. Advanced management and includes CC Pro for Tier 2; 5-year subscription / Tier 2 device; Tier 2 devices include FWB AP, PTP and IIoT
As you can see in the above description, pricing is per device for the entire duration (1/3/5 Years) and not monthly.
I would recommend you to get in touch with the sales team in your region for the pricing part.
You’ll need a subscription for every (non-free-tier) device in your account. cnMaestro X features will not be unlocked until each device has a valid subscription. The features apply to the account as a whole, covering all devices managed in the account; there is no way to apply them to a subset of devices.
I Think the license for each AP/SM is a very poor notice from Cambium… we have many many sm and finally I pay license to monitoring? Its incredible…
I hope cnmaestro 2.4.2 still work and upgradable, because I think the fee question have a grave impact to change in cnMaestroX !!
So just to be clear.
If for example a customer have the follow mixed network
50 PMP 450 and ePMP APs
1000 PMP mix of SMs
5 PTP links (10 radios)
50 e-series WiFi AP’s
10 cnMatrix Switches
100 r-series WiFi AP’s
They would need the following (assuming 3 years)
(1000) MSX-SUB-T1-3
(60) MSX-SUB-T2-3
(50) MSX-SUB-T3-3
switches and r-series included in Tier 0
Is this correct?
The one item I am concerned about is that there are probably lots of industrial /utility customers out there with lots of PMP/PTP/IIOT but have also deployed e-series AP’s (ie e410,e500) for local employee / contractor access. They don’t need any of the advanced T3 services yet have to pay for that Tier just to see them in cnMaestro. I would much rather see the the e-series be supported in basic mode (Essentials) unless you added a Tier 3 license for that unit.
Seems a high cost for features that are not needed.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who finds the licensing a little bit odd.
@Cambium_Ajay What I hinted to in the last paragraph is the ability to buy a Cambium product and have the license bundled with the product ie inside the box.I’d rather buy hardware and have 5Y license key included in the box and not have to deal with the overhead of maintaining individual licenses for thousands of devices spread over multiple continents. The moment I have to buy licensing as a separate line item I have to go through different financial departments (ie capex + opex divisions).The other fun part for those of us outside of the US, is that the pricing is highly dependent on our Dollar to local currency value so pricing that I receive from my MSP’s is usually not valid for more than 24H. By the time I receive 4-5 quotes from different MSP’s pricing is usually invalid. What the MSP’s usually do is add some extra markup to try and cover costs but all this does is hurt your case because it makes the product even more expensive. You guys are starting to enter Aruba levels of pricing, and whilst the E series are good AP’s they’re not Aruba levels of good.
I think Cambium should look into introducing bulk licensing/bulk pricing for these bigger ISP’s/WISPs as it seems to be really hurting their bottom line.
8 dollars (per year) for a single costumer SM is to high.
10.000 costumers costumers (many of them are families that pay very low fee) are 80.000 dollars per year.
I think would be better if you need to pay only the AP (450 etc…) or also better pay N dollars per year for the cnMaestro X utilization.
Just wanted to reiterate that cnMaestro X is not the replacement of cnMaestro, which you have been using for more than 5+ years. Starting from 3.0.0, cnMaestro comes into two variants – cnMaestro Essentials and cnMaestro X. We are committed to continue with cnMaestro Essentials free of cost. So if you feel that cnMaestro Essentials suffices your requirement and you don’t need any of the advanced capabilities, then you can still continue with cnMaestro Essentials.
To give an idea of some of the differences between cnMaestro Essentials and cnMaestro X: features in the current version of cnMaestro that have a “Pro” icon next to them are what would be considered part of cnMaestro X. Everything else in 2.4.2 is included in cnMaestro Essentials for free.
Advanced new features are also being developed for cnMaestro X beyond the 2.4.2 release.
Hello @Cambium_Ajay & @Jordan,
The cnMaestro platform has been a good support tool for us as a systems integrator and growing MSP during the past few years with many organisations.
We have a few questions on the evolution to cnMaestro X:
If a client does not take up cnMaestro X, can we still monitor & collect statics, back-up the configs and update the firmware for all of those clients through the Essentials version (as could be done previously)?
What happens when onboarding new equipment and systems, is there a certain number of days grace period to use and let the customer experience the cnMaestro X?
When will all of the organisations complete get transferred over to cnMaestro X?
We work with another manufacture who bundles 1 year of their cloud system as part of the warranty, would Cambium consider doing this?
Some of or all of these may have been covered in a previous post or announcement, if so please reply with a link to that for us and others following to reference back to.
Happy to Help,
Marcus
PS, I did read through this post looking for answers
Any of you using MSP to manage your customers are going to have to manually reconfigure all those APs back to an essential in a separate account for each AP. We have all our customers in an easy to manage system right now that will go away. I asked them to adopt the Fortinet MSP model where I pay a $1000 fee for the year so we can manage our customers and the extra features are then on another license. My request obviously fell on deaf ears as i am on the webinar now. You have to have a license for every AP you have. This is just a HUGE money grab they are trying to make. Unless we fight back with dollars they will not listen. We will move to selling fortinet and extreme who allow multi-client management in a better format for an MSP. Now I have to go to my customers and explain why I am switching them from cambium.
– 24 x 7 Support for basic and complex technical questions
– Software updates included
– Assistance with hardware diagnosis
– Accelerated access to Level 2 and Level 3 engineers
– Standard hardware warranty
If I want to buy cnpilot e410 AP and do basic management and software upgrades in the free tier of cnMaestro can I do that now and in the future indefinitely? Or will e410 always require paid annual services per device to use cnMaestro?
Do I have to pay for cnMaestro X licenses to get software upgrades and get a standard hardware warranty?
Is any technical support included if I purchase a cnpilot E410 and do not pay per AP for support?
Q> “If I want to buy cnpilot e410 AP and do basic management and software upgrades in the free tier of cnMaestro can I do that now and in the future indefinitely?”
A> You do not have to purchase cnMaestro X subscription and can continue to use cnMaestro Essentials (license-free)
Q> “Do I have to pay for cnMaestro X licenses to get software upgrades and get a standard hardware warranty?”
A> You will get software updates for cnMaestro Essentials without a paid subscription
Q>“Is any technical support included if I purchase a cnpilot E410 and do not pay per AP for support?”
A> 8x5 technical support is included with cnMaestro Essentials
MSP Rollback question
So if someone has been using MSP with a bunch of sub-companies and now has been upgraded to cnMaestroX. What happens “Exactly” in 60+ days if there is no paid upgrade to X.
I assume that the managed services button will disappear and all of the MSP customer accts will no longer be active.
That’s fine, however, what happens to the AP Groups, WAN’s, MSP organization etc.
Again, I assume that these will just fall into Essentials similar to a non MSP account.
BUT … assumptions aside, can we get clear direction.
Of course then there is all of the work of moving them out to their own acct.
Just don’t want everything to blow up in 60+ days if that is not done.
