Entire-Community Visualization With Meraki Dashboard

Half 2 of the 4-part collection – Cloud monitoring for Cisco Catalyst switches collection

Welcome again to the second weblog in our collection for cloud monitoring of Cisco Catalyst 9000 switches!

Like I mentioned in my final weblog, a very powerful step in your journey to the cloud begins with visibility. Relatively than making an attempt to elucidate with too many phrases what I imply by visibility, I’m going to spend a while displaying you—so brace your self for lots of screenshots.

Irrespective of the way you need to handle your community, be it digging deep into the command-line interface (CLI) or making a number of clicks within the Meraki dashboard, visualizing your whole community is extremely essential for a lot of causes. On this weblog, I’m going to cowl only a few, however I’d love to listen to your personal causes within the feedback beneath.

Image-perfect visualization

First, you need that picture-perfect view of your community. With the ability to simply see if all the things is on-line (or not) from a single platform is significant to what you are promoting.

For this specific occasion, I’m logged into the Cisco San Francisco workplace community. I can instantly have a look at the well being of the community, proven within the screenshot beneath.

From right here, it’s straightforward to see I’ve a difficulty with two switches. I can click on on the switches to see a full record of all the switches on this community. I also can filter to solely see the “unhealthy” switches. We’re going to get into troubleshooting in our subsequent weblog, so keep tuned for that.

Once I view the record of switches on this workplace, I can simply inform which gadgets are monitored Catalyst 9000 switches with the “Monitor Solely” tag—you may’t miss it! Additionally on this record, you may see there are a number of monitored Catalyst 9300s in addition to MS350s and one MS250. My level right here—when you’ve got a blended Catalyst and Meraki setting, you may see your whole gadgets from the Meraki dashboard. I’ll even pop over and present the record of our latest Catalyst Wi-fi (CW) Wi-Fi 6E entry factors, test it out:

The power to see all of my networks in a number of clicks is actually a mic-drop second—pause your studying right here for impact.

Monitoring Catalyst switches

Let’s get again to the “Monitor Solely” change. By clicking on the change you may see all the needed data for the change to work. Once more, it is a monitored Catalyst 9300 change, so that you’ll have the ability to view all the things, however you may’t make any configuration modifications to a monitor-only change.

Within the preliminary view of the monitored Catalyst change, you may view the next:

• Bodily deal with and placement
• LAN IP
• Public IP
• Gateway
• Serial numbers: Catalyst and Meraki
• Historic gadget knowledge and consumer utilization knowledge
• The present firmware model on the change

Change port visibility

My private favourite half in regards to the Meraki dashboard, in case you haven’t observed, is the convenience of use. And my favourite half in regards to the switches is you may truly click on on the change port you need to view. This has been one among my favourite issues to indicate people dwell at commerce reveals.

Let’s select that enjoyable little uplink port over there, quantity 24. By clicking into that port you may view configurations (once more, no edit on Catalyst switches) and see standing gadgets like connectivity, utilization, site visitors, CDP/LLDP, and PoE utilization. It’s also possible to do issues like cycle a port, mass cycle ports, run a MAC forwarding desk, or just ping an IP. I’ve heard from prospects that these previous couple of gadgets are a reasonably large deal and make their lives a ton simpler.

Community topology—the large image

Final, however actually not least, we’re going to return again full circle to the theme of the “huge image” and visualization. The community topology view contained in the Meraki dashboard is such a strong device. If we observe the identical change right here, we will see it in yellow on the far proper. We are able to additionally see and click on into the remainder of the community infrastructure from this topology view and see any monitored Catalyst 9000 gadgets and managed Meraki gadgets, in addition to CW entry factors.

Whereas it’s been enjoyable to stroll you thru a cloud-monitored Catalyst 9000 change and provides a high-level overview of the Meraki dashboard, let’s not neglect why we’re right here. Visualizing your community infrastructure from a single dashboard may be one of the vital highly effective instruments to have in your equipment and a very easy and quick solution to present fast worth.

If you happen to’re prepared now—nice! Right here’s our getting began information. If you happen to’re nonetheless exploring, take a look at our on-demand #CiscoChat the place I and a few colleagues focus on all issues cloud monitoring at this time and what’s coming subsequent.

Additionally, test again in a month for my subsequent weblog. We’ll be protecting community troubleshooting.

Study extra about cloud monitoring for Catalyst switches from the consultants

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