Cannot get a vMX alive in AWS

[Pugmiester]

Hi all,

I must be missing something here because it just can't be this hard.

The EC2 instance is up and running (using the Meraki setup guide - https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Installation_Guides/vMX100_Setup_Guide_for_Amazon_AWS) and using the "customer data" from the authentication token. We can reach the appliance's public IP (we have a rule allowing port 80 inbound temporarily to troubleshoot) and it confirms internet access but no connection to the dashboard over port 7734. However, AWS flows confirm it's sending and receiving data from the dashboard over port 80 and port 7734 but it just will not phone home and show up in the dashboard at all.

What have I missed?

[JamesC_AB · Accepted solution]

I've come across a similar issue on a couple of vMXs. I had to call Meraki support and ask them to make a "back-end change" to allow the vMX to sync its config. They may ask you to power cycle the vMX instance after the change. Once it syncs successfully, they reverse the change and confirm that configuration sync are still working. The process takes about 20mins.

As an aside - this may be helpful - AWS lets you view the status of the vMX by going to Instance Settings > Get Instance Snapshot. The status message might shed some light for you.

[Pugmiester]

Hi @JamesC_AB,

It seems you were spot on. The update from Meraki overnight was that they changed something in the back-end of the dashboard and now it's all working without any changes on this end despite them being sure it was a firewall issue on our side. Anyway, we're up and running. Thanks all for the suggestions.

[QLSteve]

We saw the same thing spinning up VMX in Azure, took a while to sync up

[Pugmiester]

Ironically, the setup we did in Azure to test came up almost straight away. Untangling the right options and getting things in the right NSG to start with is more of a challenge there and as you can't change the vMX appliance once it's deployed it meant we had to tear it down and rebuild it again but once we had that done it was up and running.

[PhilipDAth]

Sometimes when they first "come online" they spend 20 or so minutes upgrading their firmware before they come online in the dashboard.

Assuming it has been longer than that, I'd go with @JamesC_AB suggestion and ask support for help.

[PhilipDAth]

ps. You can also do a console snapshot in AWS to see if it is reporting that it is happy there.