Network/device Uptime

[JamesPickup]

Apologies if this is documented, but I was unable to find anything.  

Is there a way to extract the network uptime via API?  

[PhilipDAth · Accepted solution]

No.

[JamesPickup]

ok, thanks for the quick response.

[RaphaelL]

Only the Meraki Support can see the Uptime. Why ? Good question... 

[Prodrick]

Might this new endpoint (in 1.36) be a way to get device uptimes?

/organizations/{organizationId}/devices/availabilities/changeHistory

https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/get-organization-devices-availabilities-change-history/

[LearningIsFun]

I have heard whispers that Device uptime and reboot reasons are in the works on the MS product line, with MX and MRs to follow...   As in soon to come.. Not waiting two years on the wish list.

The basic information within standard Cisco (non-meraki) devices.

[Prodrick]

@John_on_API, if I am reading this endpoint correctly, perhaps one can look at the "ts" (assume this is timestamp?) field of the following new endpoint (v1.36), when the new status is online (in bold), to determine the uptime?

/organizations/{organizationId}/devices/availabilities/changeHistory

 https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/get-organization-devices-availabilities-change-history/ 

[

{ "ts": "2018-02-11T00:00:00.090210Z",
"device": { "serial": "Q234-ABCD-5678", "name": "My AP", "productType": "wireless", "model": "MR34" }, "details":
{

"old":
[ { "name": "status", "value": "offline" } ],

"new":

[ { "name": "status", "value": "online" } ]

},

"network": { "id": "N_24329156", "name": "Main Office", "url": "https://n1.meraki.com//n//manage/nodes/list", "tags": [ "tag1", "tag2" ] }

}

]

[sungod]

That won't be a reliable way to determine true device 'uptime'...

A device can be up, but not in contact with Dashboard, i.e. a switch is working fine on the site's LAN, but the site has lost Internet connection to Dashboard, then even though the device is up, its Dashboard status will be "offline".

There is at least one other status "alerting", which means the device is online but reporting some issue (which I'd say is usually not caused by the device itself). I.e if the old status is "alerting" and the new status is "online", you can't tell when the device last left "offline" state.

[John_on_API]

"Network uptime" could mean a few things--what is the end goal (beyond a number itself) that are you looking to achieve, @JamesPickup ?

One interpretation might be how many devices in an organization or network are online vice in some other status/availability. https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/get-organization-devices-statuses-overview/ can help with this at an aggregate level, and https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/get-organization-devices-availabilities-change-history/ can help with the availability changes on a per-device level. Good rec, @Prodrick!

If by 'uptime' you mean some explicit information about when devices last booted, or some amount of time since they last booted, as @sungod mentioned above, availability and device-specific uptime per se are not necessarily the same thing. However, that kind of "uptime" is not a reliable stat on its own--it really depends on what you want to do with the information, since there's probably a better way to achieve the end goal. There are good reasons to reboot devices, such as firmware upgrades, for example, and you can check firmware upgrade histories pretty easily. And power outages will be reflected in availability changes, if that's what you're looking to detect.

Availability on the other hand more holistically indicates that both the LAN and the WAN are meeting some minimum level of functionality, and covers more use cases, so availability will often be more relevant than per-device uptime. In any case, if you can share more details about what you want to accomplish, that would help!

[JamesPickup]

thank you for your interest @John_on_API

Ideally network connectivity information, so most of our ~300 MX devices have two VPNs, one to an on-prem Meraki Hub, one to a cloud non-Meraki peer (Azure).

Centrally reporting their current and historical status, alongside other equipment, i.e. non Meraki switches etc, is proving very difficult.   For example using Solarwinds, we would need two instances of Solarwinds, one in Azure, one on-Prem, in order to see the status of both VPNs.

[ls08]

This is such an apple support forums response for a basic feature. It's just uptime of last reboot. Meraki support has this uptime information of the last 3 boots. You can't say this information is not reliable itself, but supports can gather this information for themselves. And the only way for us to see it is to open a ticket. Meraki had some concepts on having uptime on the dashboard for customers, but it's been almost a year and they probably dropped the idea.  It's in my orgs wish list and still remains.  Of course if I had the last 3 reboot uptimes I can use that to help troubleshoot my issues.

[amabt]

Just adding my voice for getting that uptime in dashboard or via API