Introducing MS130!

Power up your network and unlock endless customer experience possibilities with the new MS130 switches! Designed for high-bandwidth Wi-Fi deployments, these purpose-built access switches offer multi-gigabit capacity, advanced security features*, and intelligent power management. They allow you to upgrade your network without the need for costly cabling overhauls, ensuring a seamless experience for your users.

We are excited to announce additional Catalyst 9300 switches can now be migrated to Meraki management mode.  Join us and unlock the flexibility and control at the cloud scale today with the Meraki dashboard.  

Newly added support: 

• Switches: C9300 24S/48S, C9300X 12Y/24Y

• Network modules: C9300-NM-2Y*, C9300X-NM-2C, C9300X-NM-8Y* (please note: the C9300X-NM network modules are compatible only with the C9300X switches)

• Other C9300 compatible network modules: C9300-NM-2Q, C9300-NM-8X, C3850-NM-2-40G, C3850-NM-4-10G, C3850-NM-8-10G

* Please note that C9300-NM-2Y and C9300X-NM-8Y support up to 10G in Meraki cloud-managed mode.

For more information, please refer to this announcement post. 

Resource:

• FAQs
• Quick Migration Guide 
• Getting started documentation

To further enhance the zero-touch provisioning deployment options, we are excited to announce the public preview of Auto Stacking. With Auto Stacking, the dashboard will now auto-provision detected switch stacks without user intervention.  Navigate to Organization > Early Access page, and toggle “Opt-in” to enable this new feature! 

Check out this documentation for details. 

Did you miss some of the exciting new feature releases from the Meraki Switching team? Watch this 5-minute video for a quick recap to learn more about how these features can help streamline your network deployments as well as day-to-day operations!

Watch now. 

We are excited to announce that Cisco Meraki for Government is now available to buy for our U.S. Federal customers. Cisco Meraki for Government provides a secure and efficient way to support networking transformation within budget.

Our cloud-managed platform simplifies networking to make it easier to deploy, manage, and optimize networks-driving IT modernization and enabling hybrid work. Meraki helps future proof networks and allows agencies to stay ahead of changing citizen and regulatory demands while improving employee productivity.​

Are you a Canadian customer that would like to store data locally? If so, we can help! We’ve created Cisco Meraki Canada Region, a separate cloud platform that stores network management data within Canada. Cisco Meraki Canada Region is now generally available and provides the same security, reliability and redundancy offered by our distributed cloud architecture.  
 
Main benefits: 

1. Same ease of use as our commercial cloud  
2. Same end-to-end visibility across your networks 
3. Same security and reliability 
4. No user data passes through the Meraki platform 
5. Network management data stored in Canada 

We are excited to announce a new smart alert - MAC flap anomaly. Sometimes, MAC flap detection events can become noisy due to wireless roaming, which is expected. Due to this noise, it is hard to tell which events are expected versus unexpected. To solve this problem, Cisco Meraki has built this smart alert to help detect these unexpected events more accurately.

We are thrilled to announce a new email alert functionality ~ mute wireless notification based on switch port schedule. This benefits network administrators who enabled or would like to enable the switch port schedule feature to power off Meraki APs to save energy and do not wish to get notified for AP up and down alerts.

We are excited to announce the public preview of Port Profiles feature. 

Please note: This feature has no minimum firmware requirements, MS15.21.1 or later is recommended for the best overall management experience. Port profiles are supported on non-templated switching networks. Support for Configuration Templates and networks bound to configuration templates will be added in the near future. 

Need more information? 

Check out the Port Profiles documentation pages for details. Should you encounter any issues, please do not hesitate to contact Meraki Support for assistance. 

We are excited to announce eligible Catalyst 9300 switches can now migrate to Meraki management mode.  Join us and unlock the flexibility and control at the cloud scale today with the Meraki dashboard. 

Eligible models:

• C9300-24P/T/U/UX
• C9300-48P/T/U/UN/UXM 

We are excited to announce the release of our latest MS16 software beta version! This release delivered new features and improvements designed to make you more efficient and productive. Upgrade to this new version today for remote network traffic analysis flow improvement and network security enhancement. We encourage you to upgrade to the latest software release and provide us with your feedback.  

Eligible platforms 

MS16 will be applicable to all non-MS390 switches. If your network has MS390 and/or migrated C9300, please refer to our latest Catalyst-based Switching (CS) firmware release. 

We are thrilled to introduce independent firmware releases for Meraki Switching (MS) and Catalyst-based Switching (CS), including the MS390 and migrated C9300 switches. This milestone furthers our commitment to delivering consistent and reliable features and quality updates to all our customers, regardless of your switching product models. 

Why are we doing this? 

This new firmware release approach will accelerate our value delivery, so you, as a customer, will experience more innovations faster and better, regardless of your switching product models. We will ensure a consistent user experience and interoperability on both firmware branches when adding new features, albeit with different release schedules.

We are super excited to announce that VLAN Profiles is now available to access via the early access page. 

MS users, please go to the dashboard, navigate to Organization>Early Access, and toggle “VLAN Profiles” to sign up today! Please refer to the VLAN Profiles documentation page for requirements, guidelines, and limitations. 

For MR users who would like to use this feature, please join the MR 30 Early Adopters Signup here.

Update now! Significant quality improvements and new features. Check out the MS Firmware Features Directory for details. 

We are super excited to announce the launch of the new Switching Overview feature as part of our continuously improving Meraki dashboard! This new feature provides a centralized management hub that gives you a comprehensive view of the status and performance of your switch infrastructure, allowing for better network understanding and identification of potential issues.

Some of the benefits of the new Switching Overview feature include: 

• Enhanced monitoring experience: The new feature is designed to consolidate wide-ranging alerts, metrics, and overall switch infrastructure health into a condensed bird’s eye view.

• Reduced click-time: You no longer need to browse through an assortment of dashboard pages. View and monitor your switching network with efficiency and speed.

• Ability to forecast future network needs: Understand your switching network’s capacity and current utilization to better predict and plan for network expansion needs.

Have you recently upgraded your Meraki Switches to Firmware 15.18 Release Candidate? If so, we would love to hear from you!  Please take a few moments to complete this Google Form and share your direct feedback and experience with us.

If you missed the announcement, please check out this community post for details. As always, should you encounter any issues with your upgrade, please get in touch with Meraki support for assistance.

MS 15.18 Release Candidate is now available for all switch customers via the Meraki dashboard. We have made significant quality improvements and added lots of new features in this release. It brings powerful network security and analytics capabilities, streamlined policy management, and enhanced PoE features.

Head on over to the firmware management page and schedule your upgrades now.  

To reduce confusion between the new Cisco+ Secure Connect product and the existing MS and MR SecureConnect feature, we are renaming the port configuration capability. We will begin referring to the automated process of securely provisioning MR Access Points when directly connected to Meraki MS Switches as SecurePort.  

Please note that this name change will impact the following API end-point, where customers will need to modify the key ‘secureConnect’ to ‘securePort’ on their API calls:

1.https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/#!get-network-settings 

2.https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/#!get-device-switch-ports-statuses 

Learn more 

Read more about SecurePort here.

Keeping track of your firmware update isn’t a glamorous task, but it’s a necessary one that can consume bandwidth you probably don’t have. Perhaps you’ve checked out the improved Staged Upgrades feature, but how can you monitor upgrade progress at the individual switch level? “Does this switch have an upgrade scheduled?”, “Does anything need my attention?”. These are the common questions we all have when updating. 

We now have per-device upgrade status for each switch in a network.

Rolled out on Oct 31st (no trick, only the treat!), firmware upgrade status provides context on the upgrade status for each switch in a network, to reassure admins that firmware upgrades are progressing as scheduled. Update status flags will appear automatically for all switch networks whenever an upgrade is scheduled or in progress. 👏👏

We are thrilled to introduce the public preview of the improved MS staged upgrades! 

What’s new? 

Staged upgrades improves on the previous version with:

• Reusable upgrade groups
• Easier rescheduling
• Better upgrade progress monitoring
• Ability to use the API to manage and schedule staged upgrades

• A single-page workflow so the entire upgrade can be managed from the org-wide firmware page.
• Switch stacks are treated as a single logical unit, rather than assigning individual stack member switches to upgrade stages.

Putting endpoints to sleep to save energy doesn’t normally play well with 802.1X. You often have to make a choice between compromising security or keeping devices awake 24/365. With more pressure on IT energy savings on the one hand and rising cybersecurity threats expected to continue on the other hand, network pros (like you) are getting a seemingly impossible mission. 

Great news! We are excited to share the public preview of the new MS 802.1X Control Direction (1XCD)! This public preview is now available for all orgs on the switch access policies page. 

Public preview allows all customers to test the feature and leverage Meraki support if they encounter issues. However, this feature is still considered “beta” and customers should be prepared to test for unexpected issues that may occur before deciding to roll out the feature to critical networks.

This Meraki dashboard feature is designed to reduce time to resolution for our customers by easing manual tasks, simplifying the configuration process, and dynamically detecting errors.

The MS 15 beta is now available for download in the Meraki dashboard. Head on over to the firmware management page to schedule your upgrades. 

Check out the article in Documentation to get the step-by-step instructions.

But simply:

1- Login to your Meraki dashboard.

2- Visit the Firmware Upgrade page in the dashboard and schedule a firmware upgrade, selecting the MS 15 beta version.

3- By heading to Network Wide > General and turning the “Try beta firmware” to Yes on any individual networks, you’ll be the first to automatically have new beta firmware scheduled for upgrade in the future. Note that this is per-network so you could opt-in your lab and a low-risk site without affecting your production areas elsewhere.

 ** Always be sure to read the release notes for any notable changes or behavioral differences

With MS 15, you’ll get powerful new network security and analytics capabilities, streamlined policy management, and enhanced PoE capabilities. Let’s get into the specifics: 

New in the MS390 only:

• 802.3bt - Enable your network with the industry standard for 60 Watts of PoE per port to power next-generation Access Points, Cameras, and Smart building automation
• NBAR based Netflow export - Built for Cisco Secure Network Analytics and many other flow collectors, providing full NBARv2 traffic analysis
• Encrypted Traffic Analytics - Get in-depth analysis of traffic without decryption for use with Cisco Secure Network and Cloud Analytics
• StackPower status - Verify and monitor StackPower status and StackPower budgeting information for the respective switch in a StackPower pool

New in MS390 but already available in other MS switches:

• Critical/Failed Auth - Provide limited access VLAN assignment for a failed authentication
• Group Policy ACLs - Per-session 802.1X inbound ACL enforcement

New in both MS390 and others:

• FIPS mode - now available for those requiring FIPS compliance - please contact your Meraki rep if required

• Named VLANs - Send VLAN names rather than ID numbers from the RADIUS server and let the switch automatically map to the appropriate VLAN ID

• Dynamic config for Voice VLAN - Further streamlining policy management across networks

Get a jump on your competition, prepare your next-generation network, and shape the market in your way. For our part, Meraki provides a seamless pathway to Beta test this software with unparalleled support along the way.

With the MX16 firmware release, NBAR will be available for full-stack enablement! 🚀

New capabilities and visibility are now available to the Meraki dashboard to help simplify troubleshooting. Users can now pinpoint issues more quickly, and ensure excellent connectivity for clients. These updates are designed to not only provide insights about the health of Wi-Fi clients, but also to provide end-to-end visibility. Enhanced visibility will now allow for immediate identification of whether wireless is problematic, or if, for example, an upstream device is misconfigured.