Can I Merakify and manage "legacy" Cisco IOS devices with the Meraki dashboard?

BruceW
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Can I Merakify and manage "legacy" Cisco IOS devices with the Meraki dashboard?

I really love the Merki dashboard.   

How can I Merakify and manage other Cisco devices with the dashboard?  Is there an upgrade path to the Meraki OS? I hope it doesn't take as long as it took to switch from CATOS to IOS as it will be for IOS to MERAKI OS. 🙂

 

 

 

 

Bruce

Bruce Winters
9 REPLIES 9
PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

You can't manage "classic" or "enterprise" Cisco devices from the dashboard.  You can only manage devices that have a "Meraki" badge on them.

 

Your best bet would be as hardware comes up for replacement to replace them with Meraki badged kit.

 

 

Also note "Meraki OS" is not a replacement of IOS (which is in itself being replaced by IOS-XE).


Grasshopper, that is just because Cisco has not allowed you to replace IOS with Meraki OS.   We need to ask Cisco for this capability and it will happen.  Cisco will listen to it's customer base.   🙂    We just need to keep asking.   Ask your salesman before you place an order, ask them when they call on you to sell you more gear. 
Meraki OS could run on any white box gear.  You just need to ask, and when they say no, ask again.   The hardware is a commodity, the software is the key to the future.  🙂   

If Meraki doesn't do it, then open source or another company will.    

https://www.cio.com/article/3040853/software/4-principles-that-will-shape-the-future-of-it.html


@PhilipDAth wrote:

You can't manage "classic" or "enterprise" Cisco devices from the dashboard.  You can only manage devices that have a "Meraki" badge on them.

Your best bet would be as hardware comes up for replacement to replace them with Meraki badged kit.

Also note "Meraki OS" is not a replacement of IOS (which is in itself being replaced by IOS-XE).


 

Bruce Winters

It is reinventing the wheel for Meraki to produce their own Meraki OS's while the Cisco mothership already have their own mature IOS platform.

 

I'd also love to see Meraki build a portal that lets you configure and manage a Cisco ASA for example. All it would have to do is generate a config file for the device.

Unfortunately, it seems the direction the meraki ship is heading in is slow incremental improvement.

The next time you make a Meraki purchase tell the sales team you will only buy Cisco Meraki if you can manage your legacy Cisco (pick one device that you have the most of) with it.   Ask them for a roadmap as to when it's going to get done and when the rest of the portfolio will be included.

 

This is not a technical issue it is a political issue.

 

 

My prediction The "Meraki Child" will end up eating the Cisco parent.

 

This is and excerpt from "Growth by Acquisition: The Case of Cisco Systems"

https://www.strategy-business.com/article/15617?gko=3ec0c

 

JOHN CHAMBERS: We have a philosophy that we will eat our own young before somebody else does. In Internet years, things change at a much faster pace than you realize and we get surprised periodically.

Here's an example. We acquired a company called Lightstream in 1995 for its high-end A.T.M. [asynchronous transfer mode] capability. When we acquired it, it had only about $1.5 million in hardware revenue. We paid $120 million for it. One year later, its run rate was $45 million. It was well on the path to being a success, perhaps even a home run.

But then we began to notice that wide area networking and local area networking were coming together more rapidly than we had thought. Customers were telling us they were going to make buying decisions that were going to be implemented in the next year or two based on technology that was available today. In essence, they were telling us that while they liked our direction with Lightstream and liked our next-generation product, we were not going to have the market share that they needed to feel comfortable with in the next 12 to 18 months.

So even though Lightstream was on a tremendously successful run rate, we literally ate our own young and acquired StrataCom for $4.5 billion -- getting a much bigger player in the A.T.M. business -- because the market changed quicker than we thought.

 

Bruce Winters
PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

@BruceW you wont be able to use the Meraki Dashboard to ever manage Enterprise Cisco kit.  However Cisco are making their Enterprise management platforms more Meraki platform, and you can expect some of those to allow you some control over your Meraki network.

 

Of course, you should expect to pay considerably more for Cisco Enterprise management software, and expect to need considerable tin to make it run reasonable.

We will have to see how this pans out.

All we need is a customer with a $1M deal to ask for the enhancement. (I have one in mind).   You will be surprised how quickly Cisco will make it happen.

Bruce Winters
PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

I promise you @BruceW a $1m deal wont make this happen.  Even a $1m deal per month for 36 months would be doubtful.

 

Cisco Enterprise will simple tell you to use their management products - and that is probably where the money would get spent.  Not on changing the Meraki platform to support "third party" Cisco Enterprise products.

PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

ps. I can't even get Cisco to fix bug's for million dollar customers - let alone major diversions from the feature road map.

Shut the revenue stream down.  You will see some action.  

Bruce Winters
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