Meraki

Pugmiester · ‎Jun 3 2019

Hi @SoCalRacer that's the approach we've been considering as the best fit so far. It does involve an amount of cable swapping by the local guys but I think with a bit of Friday afternoon brainstorming we've found a process that should work.

Pugmiester · ‎May 31 2019

Hi folks. We're starting our roll-out of around 25 sites across Europe who will all be receiving a HA pair of MX's (64, 100, 250 depending on site size). The hardware is being shipped directly to site by Meraki and we have a varying level of IT support on each site, from dedicated IT staff through to the guy who fills the coffee machine. We're configuring all the sites ready to support dual internet feeds for future expansion (a task you need the local status page for on an MX64/MX100) and then configuring them for HA. It's a relatively simple task if all the hardware's sat on your desk but a little trickier to achieve on a remote site. A quick Google this afternoon returns a selection of links but none that really walk through the process in enough detail to make it easy to explain to someone remote. Does anyone have a handy guide that we could use to help simplify the process and make it easy to follow?

Pugmiester · ‎May 29 2019

I'm looking forward to a network that does a lot more to manage the client load and connections between the access points to better manage hotspots around the building.

Pugmiester · ‎May 28 2019

It appears that Meraki has decided that I now speak Dutch so the latest email update from them has picked Dutch accordingly. As far as I can tell on the dashboard I'm set for English so I have no idea where this has been changed. Any clues folks?

Pugmiester · ‎Apr 17 2019

Hi all. So, I logged a ticket with Meraki support and the upshot seems to be that the current mix of Meraki and Catalyst devices is preventing the network from being discovered correctly. I can understand that but I don't get why replacing Catalyst with Meraki hardware has made this particular area less visible to the topology view. Most odd. However, there's mention of LLDP which we don't currently run on the Catalyst devices so I think I'm going to enable it and see if that helps get a better picture of what's connected to what and I'll report back.

Pugmiester · ‎Apr 16 2019

Hi @BrechtSchamp, that's great. Sounds like this shouldn't be a big a headache, just plenty of warning for the affected users and some hand holding to make sure the less technical staff (guest ambassadors) have an authentication app ready to go.

Pugmiester · ‎Apr 16 2019

Hi @Cmiller, that's what I was hoping for. We have a reasonable number of guest ambassadors as we have 25+ networks with local ambassadors managing the guests so it's a decent sized update for them all but if it's a guided process it will make things a bit simpler.

Pugmiester · ‎Apr 16 2019

Hi all, We are looking to tighten up the security on our existing Meraki organisation by enforcing all admins to have multifactor authentication enabled on their account. What we're not sure about is the impact of enforcing it after the accounts have been created. We have a number of full organisation admin accounts and all of those with any sort of write permissions have MFA enabled but there are accounts with either organisational read-only or guest ambassador roles that currently don't. If we throw the switch and enforce MFA under Organization > Settings > Security, does anyone know if that would effectively lock all of the non-MFA enabled users out completely or is there an automated process that relays those users to the MFA setup the first time they try to log back in? We're just trying to avoid a bunch of help desk calls if we can and an automated process would make that a lot simpler.

Pugmiester · ‎Apr 2 2019

Hi @BrechtSchamp, based on @PhilipDAth comment about the 24 hour timing, it'll roll over to that around 10:00 this morning so I'll see what it looks like later in the day and failing that I'll raise a ticket with support. Thanks all.

Pugmiester · ‎Apr 2 2019

Hi @PhilipDAth, we made the changes on Friday afternoon so there should have been plenty of time but I didn't realise that I hadn't added VLAN1 to the trunk until I noticed the missing hardware yesterday morning so I'll see how things look later in the day.

Pugmiester · ‎Apr 1 2019

Hi @ww, yes all of the hardware is in the same combined network. I'm unsure if LLDP was enabled on the old Catalyst switch, I would guess not as I don't recall enabling it but I'm puzzled by why the Meraki switches seem to not be seeing their Meraki neighbours in the end to end path.

Pugmiester · ‎Apr 1 2019

Hi all, this has me puzzled. We have replaced an older model Cisco Catalyst switch with a Meraki MS210-24P but it's not visible on the topology, neither is the MR32 on the other side of it. Before we started, our topology looked like this :- MX-100 <> Catalyst 4500 (Our core) <> SFP fibre <> Catalyst <> MR32 The new setup looks like this :- MX-100 <> Catalyst 4500 (Our core) <> New MS225-48FP <> SFP fibre <> New MS210-24P <> MR32 None of the new hardware appears on the topology view, nor does the MR32. I must say I'm not 100% certain the MR32 was visible before the move but if I use the search on the topology view it lists 1 device found but it's not visible. We moved the fibre connection to the MS225 because we were burning up a 10Gbps SFP+ port on the core switch for a generally 10Mbps throughput connection. The links between all of the switches are trunks carrying native VLAN1 plus a couple of others in use on site. Could it simply be that the topology view isn't updated in realtime or maybe only after a switch restarts (VLAN1 was filtered off the trunk initially)?

Pugmiester · ‎Mar 1 2019

When we quickly swapped in the boxes last night in place of the existing router, the master picked up the previous internet facing IP so as long as the working device does that I think we will be OK. It's clumsy but if it'll work for us then it will ave to do for now. As I mentioned in my reply to @PhilipDArh above, we should be able to get a secondary connection running for LAN4 so at least the spare MX has a permanent dashboard connection to pickup configuration changes.

Pugmiester · ‎Mar 1 2019

Hi Philip, that's what I was thinking. There's a bit of a string and chewing gum option I have to get the LAN4 ports live on each box so at least the spare will be able to get a dashboard connection to keep the config live but I had a feeling the dual boxes might be an issue. I'll get the backup link live then see if we can do a quick swap out test and fail the primary just to see what happens. If it's clever enough to switch the traffic and goes back as the primary come back online then that might have to do.

Pugmiester · ‎Feb 28 2019

Hi all, One of our sites we're deploying Meraki firewalls to threw in a curve ball after the hardware arrived on site. They use PPPoE for internet access. Our local guy has updated both of the MX's using the local status page to include the PPPoE settings and we've just tried a test switchover. The primary MX shows as online but the spare shows as unreachable. I'm presuming it's due to the PPPoE settings only permitting a single MX to dial out at once but if there's anyone with experience of this type of connection that could confirm one way or another I'd be grateful.

Pugmiester · ‎Feb 6 2019

ha ha ha, yeah I think we have more airflow that the cat would allow so we should be OK.

Pugmiester · ‎Feb 6 2019

Great stuff, thanks Marc.

Pugmiester · ‎Feb 6 2019

That's what I was thinking Philip. It's a small site with a whopping 20Mbps internet feed and 30 staff so I can't imagine they are going to generate enough load to make a difference.

Pugmiester · ‎Feb 6 2019

Hi all, This is a physical and environmental question more than anything fancy. We have a site with a small data rack and until their old hardware is stripped out to make space, we are looking to stand an MS-120-8 and 2 x MX64's on top of each other. The rack is in an A/C controlled room so there's a reasonable supply of cooling available. Is that likely to cause any issues with temperature or performance in the short term?

Pugmiester · ‎Nov 13 2018

We're on shard n145 but everything seems to be back to normal. We've not had issues previously, I think this is the first issue with dashboard access in the last couple of years.

Pugmiester · ‎Nov 13 2018

It seems like it's starting to recover but performance is affected badly.

Pugmiester · ‎Nov 13 2018

Hi all, Is anyone else having issues reaching the Meraki Dashboard? It's started in the last couple of minutes and a logout/login is throwing up the same error.

Pugmiester · ‎Oct 31 2018

Hi @jdsilva Thanks for the pointer. I hadn't realised the best practice guide had been updated. I've stripped out the HA dedicated patch cable and together with dual connections from each MX to each switch, everything is looking rock solid. I think we have a winner.

Pugmiester · ‎Oct 31 2018

Both MX's are currently running on 13.33. I have a dedicated VRRP link between the boxes, not across the LAN, so I was expecting the primary to still be able to pass control to the secondary having detected a loss of its local LAN connection but that doesn't seem to happen. In the meantime, I've added a pair of additional patch cables from each MX to the opposing switch and let Spanning Tree sort out what's what which seems to have done the trick. That's a solution I can work with.

Pugmiester · ‎Oct 31 2018

Hi all, I'm testing an install before we make it a blueprint for some of our smaller EU offices and I have an odd situation I can't seem to see a way to fix. I have a pair of MX64's in Warm spare mode. They're connected with a dedicated patch cable for HA and work as expected, the primary fails, the spare takes over. My issue is the LAN side. Each MX connects to it's own Meraki MS220-8P (We'll use larger switches on site) and then the two switches are linked by a trunk. All is happy until the switch the primary MX connects to fails (or I pull the LAN cable). If the LAN side of the Primary MX fails, it doesn't see this as a failure and therefore pass the primary role to the MX that still has LAN connectivity which then leaves all of the remaining clients on the live switch with no internet connectivity. Am I missing something really obvious?

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