How long for dashboard??

[RoadstoneUK]

Hi all,

I'm relativly new to Meraki, although not new to Cisco (having spent the past 15+ years working on various models of Catalyst switches). That said, I'm curious (frustrated) to know how long one waits for the management plane to connect to the dashboard, before one stops waiting and starts troubleshooting. In peoples experience, what's the longest any of you have had to wait?

The scenario is that we've switched out an MS390 today under an RMA. Not a very technical setup. 1 x MS390 with a couple VLAN's and a couple AP's. On the final test reboot this even, the switch has dropped off from management dashboard. Post the restart, the switch comes up and traffic flows as expected. The network is atleast operational. But it's been over an hour and it's still not connected to the management dashboard (solid amber). I'm rather surpised that for an enterpirse grade product, there aren't a huge number of tools to troubleshoot these connectivity issues other than checking upstream (which one assumes is fine if it's able to pull down the config) and a rather basic console. The cycling of a single LED stopping on amber, is doing nothing for the blood pressure.

All the best,

Rob

[PaulMcG]

Generally 5 to 10 minutes from bootup a switch should be connected to dashboard.  I have had some instances where a switch was powered up for like an hour before having an uplink connected and then I still had no connectivity after 20 minutes.  So I usually make sure an uplink is connected before powering up a switch.  Although this might not apply to your scenario.

[BlakeRichardson]

Depending on your network setup you may need to login to the local management page of the switch and configure its IP address. 

[PhilipDAth]

From my experience, for a switch, the first power on can take 20 minutes.  It will frequently have to change the MS firmware.

However you mention the MS390 - which has a terrible reputation.  So all bets are off.

Our standard operating procedure is to place the switch in the network (and plugged in and online) and leave it for 24 hours.  This gives it plenty of time for firmware updates, etc.

[RoadstoneUK]

Yes. I think my first post to the Meraki community was related to the large number of management plane disconnections we were seeing with the MS390's. It was becoming fairly difficult having to explain to the business, that a monthly reboot of the network was required (especially given the cost of the inital investment). But happily, this appears to have been resolved with the last firmware update (and hopefully won't be reintroduced in a later version 🙄)

[AxL1971 · Accepted solution]

you can connect locally to the switch via the management port on the back

https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Tools_and_Troubleshooting/Using_the_Cisco_Me...

I would do that to see what the issue with your switch is.

[RoadstoneUK]

Hi all,

Thanks for the feedback. We ended connecting to the managment port as AxL1971 suggeted, and statically assigning the IP address & name servers. For us, the problem was caused by the switch picking up an IP from a DHCP server in one another VLAN rather than the management VLAN (and this was only identified by checking the upstream device). It's probably an age thing, but I do still think that a slightly more informative local console would befiet any engineer working on these switches.

But community feedback was helpful,

Rob

[BlakeRichardson]

@RoadstoneUK Meraki gear will always try and find a path home even if that means using an unspecified VLAN. That usually works fine but sometimes comes unstuck. 

With new equipment I always spin them up connected to a test network we have which gives direct access to the internet, that way you can set management VLAN's and IP's and know the equipment will actually talk to the dashboard and get its config.