Best Practices for Using Meraki Firewalls as Data Center Firewalls

[jOMeraki2]

Hello,

I am considering using two Meraki firewalls (configured in High Availability mode) as data center firewalls to manage traffic between servers and other VLANs.

I would like to know:

1. Is it recommended to use Meraki firewalls in this role within a data center environment?
2. What are the best practices for configuring Meraki firewalls for this use case?
3. Are there any specific considerations or limitations I should keep in mind when implementing them in such a setup?

Your insights and recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

[DarrenOC]

As always…it depends!

- budget

- overall solution design

- Firewalling requirements within the DC

- what issues or business requirements are you looking to address by implementing DC firewalls

[jOMeraki2]

I have a client with a flat network who wants to deploy a firewall in front of the servers without changing any IP addresses or configurations. He also wants to enable syslog on the firewall for traffic monitoring and analysis. I want to configure the firewall as a bridge (Layer 2).

[BlakeRichardson]

If you are wanting Syslog check out this documentation and make sure that it covers what you are wanting to capture.

https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Monitoring_and_Reporting/Syslog_Server_Overv...

Meraki use to offer free trials of equipment (not sure if they still do or not) so I would reach out to your Cisco rep and see if you can get something to have a play with. 

[PhilipDAth]

If I understand, all the servers are in a single subnet and VLAN, and the client wants protection from the Internet.

The MX will be fine for this simple use case.

[jOMeraki2]

I want to protect the servers from the user. This is a requirement from a state security institution to have a firewall placed before the servers, not the internet. I also have an MX67 as an edge device.

[RaphaelL]

As much as I love Meraki and the fact that I don't know how large your environnement is, I wouldn't use a Meraki MX for that.