Mass deployment use case

revanth
Here to help

Mass deployment use case

This is more a conceptual discussion/question. How to build automated process to update the network with standard configuration? Lets say there are 100s of networks with variety of configurations. Want to build a process which can be run repeatedly to keep them in sync. 

 

Option#1: One of the solutions can be using Meraki templates, but there are bunch of config items which are not be standard/identical, example vlans, traffic shaping rules and so on

 

Option#2: using individual APIs with PUT/POST/GET/DELETE operations to either create/update/delete resource. This option will take longer time for processing, for example I have a 2 networks one 5 vlans and the other with 4. Planning to update DHCP lease time on one if the VLANS in addition to create the 5th VLAN on second network. To achieve this, first GET vlans for each network (2 API calls), then check if all networks are available or then do POST operation on that specific network (1 API call). Then use PUT operation to change the lease time for vlan on each network (2 API call). So, on a whole for a simple usecase we need 5 API calls. Think of doing a deployment which involved more objects like traffic shaping, firewall rules, wireless profiles and ssids, this can become a big mess and time consuming when doing at a scale of 1000 networks.

 

Option#3: Using action batches, this would have a nice option but there are some pit falls using it with resources like VLANs. For example, for the same example discussed above, using action batches whole process will fail because the VLAN trying to create on network 2 already exists on network 1. So we need to make sure we add only actions that will go through if not whole batch will fail.

 

With these limitation struggling understand the best option to build a workflow that can be used to manage networks with a standard configuration in one place and mitigate and drift in configuration.

2 REPLIES 2
RaphaelL
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

To be honest it really depends on your setup !

 

A good combo of Templates , API and Action batches is what is working the best for us. We have 1500 networks , and like you said some can't be configured with templates but change control and configuration drift is not an issue due the huge portfollio of endpoints !

revanth
Here to help

Thank you @RaphaelL for the response. I thought I am alone in this boat.

 

As you said the only option is to use mix of things based on API behavior. Like use specific endpoint for resources like VLAN creation even action batch is supported. Use action batches where the state does not impact even the resource exist.

 

I feel terraform will be a good tool to use define the desired state and terraform module will decide internally on how to deal with deployment. Hope Meraki has plans to build this module.

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