Meraki large deployment

[iores]

Hi,

I have large deployment with over of 300 sites. Current Catalyst switches, which are end-of-life, are getting replaced with Meraki switches.

1. What is the best way to migrate configuration from Catalyst to Meraki?

2. Based on your experience, what tools/features/strategies would you use?

Thanks.

[DarrenOC]

From experience….start at the edge. Dont replace your core switches at each site first.  This will give you an STP headache as Meraki doesn’t support PVST/MST giving you an additional configuration overhead you don’t want.

[PhilipDAth]

If you are going to have both Catalyst and Meraki switches on the same site at the same time, change the Catalyst switches to use "mst" spanning tree before starting the deployment.

spanning-tree mode mst

If the Catalyst configurations are complex, consider using this migration script.

https://github.com/meraki/automation-scripts/tree/master/migrate_cat3k

[JonoM]

Just to add on to the excellent points already made, it is important to be aware of the different configuration options in use on your existing Catalyst switches and ensure that you've prepared the equivalent on your new Meraki switches. A few that would be worth considering are:

Spanning Tree (as mentioned)

Link Aggregations

Access Control Lists (please note that there is a single ACL list which affects all switches in the network)

SFP Usage (make sure you are using certified Cisco Meraki parts to ensure functionality)

There are a lot of other documents which may be useful depending on your setup, so please have a look through the documentation site and see what configuration update you can make on the dashboard ahead of swapping out your devices. If there are any specific questions, let us know and we can do our best to help out

[vagrant]

You may want to consider and audit of the Catalyst switches and then use the API and automate bulk VLAN and port configs. Start with a pilot site, validate and then have a rollout strategy for after.