Hello Meraki community 🙂,   This year, I wrote an article about Ansible and Meraki on Cisco Blog, to illustrate how a concrete usecase could be addressed with Ansible,   https://gblogs.cisco.com/fr/reseaux/jai-teste-ansible-pour-meraki/,   Here is the translation in English for those who are interested :   I tested... Ansible for Meraki!   Meraki, Cisco's cloud-native solution, has its own Ansible collection,   For a solution that can be managed in GUI mode via the Meraki Dashboard ("at scale"), you might well wonder what the point of this collection is.   Let's take a concrete example!   Let's take the example of a network administrator who needs to update the trunk ports of his network, to add freshly created VLANs:     "Easy! "With Meraki's Virtual Stacking (not to be confused with StackWise Virtual under IOS-XE), all we have to do is select all the ports we want to update, edit them, and add the new VLANs to the list of authorized VLANs:     It's as simple as that, if the whole LAN is in Meraki:   But even if our network administrator has chosen Meraki as the standard (convinced of the solution's simplicity and scalability), making his network homogeneous is not always easy (recovery of existing hardware, company takeovers, decentralized technological decisions, etc.).   His environment will look more like this:       Same task, but a much more complex deployment...   It's out of the question for our network administrator to go round each vendor's management console, or worse still, to update the configuration of each piece of equipment one by one, using CLI/GUI. The operation would be too laborious, risky and costly. This is where the Ansible collection comes into its own.   Let's install Ansible for Meraki     We need to install Ansible, but not only that. In a network context, Ansible often uses SSH to interact with devices (as is the case in this article). However, Ansible can also use other means of transport, such as REST APIs. This is how Ansible will drive the Meraki dashboard.     So let's install the elements needed to use Meraki's REST APIs via Ansible:     # Installing Ansible xvalette@lab cisco-meraki-ansible % python3 -m pip install --user ansible # Install Meraki SDK xvalette@lab cisco-meraki-ansible % python3 -m pip install --user meraki # Command for Mac OS users xvalette@lab cisco-meraki-ansible % export OBJC_DISABLE_INITIALIZE_FORK_SAFETY=YES     Let's create a playbook   We want to update the VLANs allowed on the trunk ports, Inspecting the collection documentation, we find the devices_switch_ports module to meet our needs, From the documentation and examples, we arrive at the following playbook:     - hosts: localhost vars: network_id: L_00000000000000 | to be replaced serial_number: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX | to be replaced meraki_api_key: clé API | to be replaced gather_facts: false tasks: - name: Update Allowed VLANs on trunk ports cisco.meraki.devices_switch_ports: meraki_api_key: "{{meraki_api_key}}" state: present serial: "{{serial_number}}" portId: 4 allowedVlans: 42-44,100-200     All set! We can launch our playbook. No need for inventory, since Ansible will drive the Meraki dashboard, not the equipment.     xvalette@lab cisco-meraki-ansible % ansible-playbook playbooks/updateAllowedVlanTrunk.yml       In conclusion In previous articles, we have used : Ansible with Catalyst Center Ansible with IOS-XE devices (or third-party via the respective collections)   Today we've just seen how to use Ansible with Meraki,   In this way, managing a heterogeneous network becomes less laborious, less risky and less costly for our network administrator:     References Ansible for Meraki collection: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/cisco/meraki/index.html Playbook examples from the Ansible collection: https://github.com/meraki/dashboard-api-ansible/tree/main/playbooks Florian GIRARD's article on Ansible for Catalyst Center: https://gblogs.cisco.com/fr/reseaux/accelerer-vos-operations-avec-ansible-et-cisco-dna-center/ Article on Ansible for IOS-XE: https://gblogs.cisco.com/fr/reseaux/manager-vos-equipements-cisco-avec-ansible/   ... View more

Hello Meraki community 🙂,   I have a dashboard with 79 Catalyst in cloud monitoring,   I wanted to know if we were able to monitor the PoE budget / consumption of those switches ?    Indeed we can launch Terminal and do : SWITCH_CLOUD_MONITORED#show power inline Module Available Used Remaining (Watts) (Watts) (Watts) ------ --------- -------- --------- 1 370.0 5.6 364.4 Interface Admin Oper Power Device Class Max (Watts) --------- ------ ---------- ------- ------------------- ----- ---- Gi1/0/1 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/2 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/3 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/4 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/5 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/6 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/7 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/8 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/9 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/10 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/11 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/12 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/13 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/14 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/15 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/16 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/17 auto on 5.6 Ieee PD 2 30.0 Gi1/0/18 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/19 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/20 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/21 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/22 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/23 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 Gi1/0/24 auto off 0.0 n/a n/a 30.0 --------- ------ ---------- ---------- ---------- ------ ----- Totals: 1 on 5.6 But I was searching for a more programatic solution to gather and monitor the 79 switches PoE budget / consumption,   Any thoughts on this point ?   Thanks a lot team ! ... View more

Sending alerts to Webex directly from the Meraki Dashboard ?   Meraki Dashboard comes with built-in payloads for webhooks (Webex, Slack, Teams, …).   Those payloads are a ready to use solution for interacting with existing applications. But if you are using the given Webex payload (Network-wide > Alerts > Webhooks > Add or edit webhook templates)...       { "markdown": "**{{alertType}}**\nAlert ID: {{alertId}}\nAlert level: {{alertLevel}}\nOccurred at: {{occurredAt}}\nOrganization name: [{{organizationName}}]({{organizationUrl}})\nOrganization ID: {{organizationId}}\nNetwork name: [{{networkName}}]({{networkUrl}})\nNetwork ID: {{networkId}}\nNetwork Tags: {{networkTags | join: ', '}}\nDevice name: {{deviceName}}\nDevice serial: [{{deviceSerial}}]({{deviceUrl}})\nDevice MAC: {{deviceMac}}\nDevice tags: {{deviceTags | join: ', '}}\nDevice model: {{deviceModel}}\n**Alert Data** {{ alertData | markdown_with_additional_formatting_for_webex }}\n" }       ...you will need to host a script listening for Meraki webhooks, and then posting a message to Webex API (via your Webex Bot).         This workflow is correct, however for the Custom app, you will need to deal with:   Scripting (Python, JavaScript, …) Networking/Security (NAT rules if you are hosting the application behind your ISP router, firewall rules if you are using a cloud VM with public IP, …) Getting computing resources (a Raspberry Pi at your place, a Cloud VM, Zapier, ...) Billing (hosting, cloud services, …)   ❗Setting up a self-hosted / cloud-hosted application can thus be time/money consuming.   Workaround   In this article, I am presenting a workaround, allowing you to post Webex messages directly from the Meraki Dashboard using a custom webhook payload:       👍Same result, but one less hop!     What are custom webhook payload templates ?   Custom payload templates allow you to define the structure of webhooks sent from Meraki Dashboard. By using it, you will be able to decide which data you want to send, and how those data are formatted.   The structure will be written in Liquid, both for the header and the body of the HTTP POST request.     Create a new webhook payload template   A new webhook payload template can be created from the Meraki Dashboard (Network-wide > Alerts > Webhooks > Add or edit webhook templates).         Or via Meraki APIs:  https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-latest/#!create-network-webhooks-payload-template      Custom webhook payload template requirements   The custom webhook payload template needs to:   Be sent to Webex API (https://webexapis.com/v1/messages) Authenticate to the Webex API with the bot token Include expected formated data (Optional) Provide an Adaptive Card for better display    For the given requirements, I am going to use the Meraki Dashboard.     … Be sent to Webex API Network-wide > Alerts > Webhooks           … Authenticate to the Webex API with the bot token Network-wide > Alerts > Webhooks > Add or edit webhook templates       … Include expected formated data Network-wide > Alerts > Webhooks > Add or edit webhook templates     Then, do not forget to apply the custom webhook template to your alerts (Network-wide > Alerts):       … (Optional) Provide an Adaptive Card for better display Network-wide > Alerts > Webhooks > Add or edit webhook templates   In the Liquid Body, you can keep the markdown format of the native Webex payload template, or you can specify an Adaptive Card for better display. An example of card is available on the following GitHub repo : https://github.com/xaviervalette/meraki-webex-custom-webhooks/blob/main/liquidBody.json To create your own custom Adaptive Card, you can use the Button and Card Designer Tool of Webex.     Here is the result! I hope it helps! ... View more