Re-ip a Meraki switch remotely - Some advice please

[phelimmc]

Hi,

Can anyone please advise? due to standardisation of IP addresses within our estate we will be reconfiguring our Meraki switches and APs with new IP address typically remotely. What is the best approach to this without losing connectivity to the Meraki switch typically when it geographically far away.

The Meraki switch will be reconnected to a different router which is configured with the new IP address range. Is the Meraki switch intelligent enough to switch to DHCP when it cannot reach out to the cloud (due to still possessing the old IP address range) or is it best to change the configuration on the switch to DHCP through the Meraki portal before the switch is connected to the new router (new IP address range)? 

Once the switch is live and connected to the new router we will change the switch and connected AP's to static IP's again within the new range via the Meraki portal. 

Thank you

[cmr]

@phelimmc it will not switch from static to DHCP.  You'd be best to switch to DHCP first and then it should re-ip without issue.

We've done this multiple times and often now leave the switches on DHCP once changed.

[cmr]

Oh and about 70% of our APs are on DHCP.  Helps a lot when we move them from one site to another.

[BrandonS]

This may be obvious, but it seems you could avoid a lot of risk by just changing to DHCP in advance.  

I do think the switch will try DHCP if it can't connect, but I would dig through documentation to try to confirm that if you need to go that way for some reason.  If at all possible, I like to have some person who is willing to show up with a laptop and ethernet cable as plan B even if they are not technical, but at least willing to be there and helpful in case of disaster and needing something like a paperclip reset or to make a console connection, etc.  

Can you explain why you want to change them to static addresses at all?  I can't see any good reason for using static IPs when DHCP reservations are easy and better in every way that I can think of.  This post is a case in point of why it would have saved you trouble.

Good luck.

[PhilipDAth]

If you are talking about the management IP address of Meraki devices, I have about 95% of my customers using DHCP for this purpose.  I don't see a strong reason to use static IP address.

Of course, if this is a layer 3 VLAN IP address used for routing - it's a different story.