SmartPorts and Automations - Testing and Learning

[SteveWeidner]

Meraki Team,

I'm with a Meraki Partner and have been selling, installing and configuring Meraki products for years.  We have a new implementation at a new customer where we installed three MS130-series switches and a couple access points.  That customer is planning to install, in the next few weeks, some security cameras.

I thought this would be a great opportunity to try SmartPorts Automations to watch for the camera MAC addresses (or more specifically, their OUI's) and "automagically" assign those ports to the Security VLAN.  It was super easy to configure the SmartPorts profile as well as the Automation - give it a name, what to match "AA:BB:CC*" and what profile to apply.  I did that all this morning and applied it to all "non-uplink" switch ports.

Here's where the plan went sideways.  Before lunch was over, the Automation had reassigned the VLAN attributes on virtually every active switch port.  The APs, the printers, and everything connected to a wired port, were suddenly in the Security VLAN (which, since the cameras aren't active yet, has no DHCP activated).  You can imagine the users.. "everything is down".

I'm unclear on why the Automation would have "adjusted" any ports at all since it is set to match on an OUI that none of the other wired devices match. 

Please advise, thanks!

[PhilipDAth]

Is there any hints in the Organisation Change Log or the switch event log?

[SteveWeidner]

The Org Change Log has an entry at the time I added the Automation to the ports and then nothing until my colleague started removing ports from the SecCam_Profile a couple hours later.

The switch Event Log has the following for each port that was a) included in the Automation and b) Active during the time frame.  These all appear about 60 seconds after the Automation was added:

• Event Type: Port profile applied dynamically
• Details: Profile SecCam_Profile applied to port 4 via DEFAULT

The latest question then, is: Where is "DEFAULT" defined and if it is not, does the only Automation become the default?

Thanks again!

[SteveWeidner · Accepted solution]

I found the solution, there is a "Default action" field immediately following the "Triggers and Actions".  I mistook that to be the action taken when the "Match criteria" is met. 

The Default action states "Settings to apply if no triggers match" and the default value is "Use existing port configuration".  

The moral of the story: Read carefully when applying new features. 😉