Introducing ThousandEyes on Meraki MX❗️

[misterchaiguy]

We’ve got eyes on your networks 👀

Hello world! Meraki is proud to announce the general availability of ThousandEyes on Meraki MX. This native integration enables businesses to quickly use the Meraki dashboard to set up perpetual monitoring across all of their MX-based networks for their most critical applications -  no matter where they reside.

Benefits include:

• In-Depth Visibility: Get actionable insights and hop-by-hop analysis for targeted troubleshooting
• Rapid Deployment: Activate branch monitoring with pre-configured test templates in minutes.
• Proactive Monitoring: Use synthetic tests to catch performance issues before they impact users

Learn more about the integration and see a demo

Who can get ThousandEyes on Meraki

No matter your license type, anyone can try it for free, but the best experience is on the Secure SD-WAN Plus license because it includes a free entitlement to ThousandEyes for up to 50 tests. For those of you with an Advanced Security license, you can purchase a separate ThousandEyes license to take advantage of this Meraki dashboard integrated solution.

How to get ThousandEyes on Meraki

Before getting started, ensure you have at least one MX-based network with an Advanced Security or Secure SD-WAN Plus license. Then, make sure you meet the below pre-requisites before getting started. As always, you can check out our documentation for more detailed instructions.

Let's get WOW together 🤩

Get proactive with your enterprise IT try ThousandEyes on Meraki today!

@Nikitha @JonasD 

[PhilipDAth]

@misterchaiguy , the first link, ThousandEyes on Meraki MX, is broken.

[misterchaiguy]

Fixed! Thanks @PhilipDAth 

[PhilipDAth]

This is the correct link:
https://meraki.cisco.com/blog/2023/11/create-experiences-with-more-saas/ 

[DarrenOC]

@misterchaiguy - you start off stating that anyone with an MX can try for free but then later state that you must have at least the Advanced Security license.  Can you please clarify 

[CptnCrnch]

@DarrenOC  Taking a look at https://documentation.meraki.com/MI/Meraki_MX_ThousandEyes_Configuration_Guide, it seems to require at least the Advanced License.

[DarrenOC]

Got it noted to take a look later but appreciate the feedback @CptnCrnch 

Hope alls good with you?

[misterchaiguy]

Hi @DarrenOC ! Anyone can try it!

- Enterprise customers can ask for a trial of the Secure SD-WAN Plus experience which has ThousandEyes tests

- Advanced Security customers can activate a 90 day trial from the dashboard

- Secure SD-WAN Plus customers have an entitlement to ThousandEyes tests - just activate in the dashboard!

Hope that helps!

[CptnCrnch]

@misterchaiguy: interesting! I'm on a SD-WAN Plus license and my Dashboard tells me that there is a Trial period ending in (currently) 89 days.

[misterchaiguy]

Consider it an added bonus! The value for Secure SD-WAN Plus license customers is that they can do a 90 day trial, AND once they're done, can activate their entitlement thereafter. It's all done in the same place - the Meraki dashboard. And the tests? They don't expire as long as there is an active Secure SD-WAN Plus license!

[CptnCrnch]

Quick initial feedback @misterchaiguy:

• Setup was Meraki-easy, so good experience
• I understand that setting up tests is more of a ThousandEyes thing. It's not difficult to set those up, but wow, then there comes licensing! Don't ever try to set up one of the pre-defined apps as they won't be able to run due to missing "credits". I'm possibly not the best example customer regarding that particular use case, but that's definitely not very Meraki-like 😞
• It would be great to see the application tests also within the Meraki Dashboard, just as you're doing with "Internet Outages". The current state will force me to be transferred to the ThousandEyes Dashboard to really see what's going on.

Hope this helps a little bit.

[DarrenOC]

“Credits”. That’ll put a lot of people off.

If you’ve bought a license to use something you shouldn’t be expected to put your hand in your pocket again 

[JonasD]

Thanks so much for your feedback! We are working on improving the overall experience even more, not just onboarding and creating tests but also viewing the results. 

[CptnCrnch]

Sounds promising @JonasD!

I guess one of the biggest issues currently is licensing:

• At least, one of the "bigger" licenses is needed to actually use this feature
• On top of that, ThousandEyes licensing comes into play that makes it a lot harder (for the typical Meraki customer) to dive deeper into that topic.

Somewhere it's mentioned that the licensing situation is to be improved and I can only hope this will come sooner or later. Something like a bundled "Advanced Security plus complete M365 / Webex / ... monitoring would be a lot easier to consume than what's currently existing.

[mlefebvre]

I consider myself a big fan of additional monitoring capabilities in the Meraki platform, however I am thus far disappointed in this launch.

-Advanced Security, and especially Advanced Security + Insight not getting any ThousandEyes entitlement at all? Insight was already a hard sell because of its lack of value, but then to say go buy your own licenses or upgrade all the way to Secure SD WAN +? You are practically selling competitor products for them at this price point.

-"Credits" and a limited number of tests makes no sense in the first place when I am running these tests from my own hardware, if I license my hardware for a feature I should be able to use as much of it as the platform will permit.

[DarrenOC]

Agree with the hard sell point.  For some verticals this may work but not for the ones I operate in.

[JGill]

I can see some opportunities, but agree this one has a long way to go to show value.  

• MX84's not supported, that's a large part of our store base.
• SSO integration not yet supported (must use local accounts). Against company policy. 
• Routing for testing of internal applications is based on Highest VLAN.  So if you have a guest / un-routable network as your highest vlan,  you can only test internet applications, no Auto-VPN based applications in the datacenters.    No option to set the source vlan for the agent at this point.  So we get better metrics for internal applications just using the existing Insights Web App health and WAN health. 
• Even if applications are setup with a local admin account,  if a user is in with their SSO account the applications show offline in the Meraki Dashboard.