Catalyst to Meraki Switchport Migrations

[RobinsonRoca]

This is a topic not getting enough attention.  Converting Catalyst 9300's to Meraki is a bit tumultuous, with competing Meraki documentation covering sideloaded Meraki OS and Native Meraki OS on Catalyst 9300, but with practice and getting used to some of the "quirks" that appear it gets easier.  The real difficulty and most time consuming is the switchport configuration migration.  I had a team member who was a python wiz and wrote up a script that pulled the config from the Catalyst switch, and populated a table with properly formatted API code, which it would push when the user executed.  Very nice, but highly complex, and needed a lot of tweaking from customer to customer. Without this, and without API skills, you are clicking your configuration into the GUI.  When it one switch, or two switches, its not much of a big deal, but 10, 20, 50 switches in, and I will want to do bad things to my eyes!!!

By now, Cisco should have provided us with some sort of GUI tool that will do this for us.  This process is painful, and should be a nothing burger for Cisco to write up.  Why is this not a thing yet?  If it is, or is going to be, can someone share a road map?  Please don't point me to that Git hub script that was written for a Cisco 3750-X conversion to an MS switch, because i've seen that a million times already. 

I need GUI and I need it NOW!!!  -Veruca Salt 😉

#switchports #Catalysttomeraki #Catalyst2Meraki

[DarrenOC]

Veruca Salt 🤣😂

But I do agree a simple migration tool should be made available to the masses. Pointing to an API or script is a cop out.

it does irk me a little when people have written a script and state that they’ve made it available in GitHub. Great, well done. Of zero use to me. Build me a tool or app I can use.  Yes I could spend the time and learn something new….but I don’t have that time.

[rhbirkelund]

I suppose the core really boils down to the Networking equivalent of Cold Fusion.

The one and only tool to migrate a complete Cisco Classic network to Meraki, without having to risk Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. 

[RobinsonRoca]

Do you think @Cisco and @Meraki are listening?  I noticed that the Meraki classic green is fading to Cisco Blue, can we take that same effort in getting us a migration to to migrate catalyst switch port configs to Meraki API configs?

[CarolineS]

We're listening. I have sent this thread to the relevant team for their consideration. Thank you for the input!!

[RobinsonRoca]

This thread is getting attention, @PhilipDAth, @cmr, @alemabrahao, help the community get more attention to this topic...Help us to help Cisco bring attention to what it's customer base is asking for.  Automated migration of configs to Meraki API.... 

[alemabrahao]

Have you already checked this?

https://github.com/fadysharobeem/Catalyst_to_Meraki_Migration_tool

[RobinsonRoca]

Yup, we checked that its not for the 9300, it's for MS, and it was originally written for the 3750-x, either way the destination switch was the MS line, not the 9300.  Look, from a business perspective, a transition tool helps Cisco move customers to Meraki faster and with more confidence.  Home grown tools, apps, and scripts, leaves too much to interpretation and leaves the potential for Cisco to have bad customer experiences.  All we need is a big enough client migration to fail, for word to get out, that the transition is not ready for prime time.  Cisco should control the narrative, write a tool that provides us options so we as engineers can focus not on the moving of ports, but the integration of the new solution.

[alemabrahao]

I understand that you don't want to do this via script, as you'll have to make adjustments from client to client, but this might help.

I personally like to configure the settings manually, as this avoids carrying over settings that aren't in use.

Another detail you need to consider is that not all Catalyst settings exist in Meraki, so you'll eventually have to configure something manually.