Half 2 of the 4-part sequence – Cloud monitoring for Cisco Catalyst switches sequence
Welcome again to the second weblog in our sequence for cloud monitoring of Cisco Catalyst 9000 switches!
Like I mentioned in my final weblog, an important step in your journey to the cloud begins with visibility. Slightly than attempting to clarify 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.
Regardless 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 total community is extremely necessary 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 every little thing is on-line (or not) from a single platform is important to your online business.
For this specific occasion, I’m logged into the Cisco San Francisco workplace community. I can instantly take 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 problem with two switches. I can click on on the switches to see a full listing 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 listing of switches on this workplace, I can simply inform which units are monitored Catalyst 9000 switches with the “Monitor Solely” tag—you may’t miss it! Additionally on this listing, you may see there are a number of monitored Catalyst 9300s in addition to MS350s and one MS250. My level right here—when you have a blended Catalyst and Meraki surroundings, you may see all your units from the Meraki dashboard. I’ll even pop over and present the listing of our latest Catalyst Wi-fi (CW) Wi-Fi 6E entry factors, test it out:
The flexibility to see all of my networks in a number of clicks is really 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 be capable of view every little thing, 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 handle and site
- LAN IP
- Public IP
- Gateway
- Serial numbers: Catalyst and Meraki
- Historic gadget knowledge and shopper 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 benefit of use. And my favourite half in regards to the switches is you may really click on on the change port you need to view. This has been certainly one of my favourite issues to point out of us stay at commerce exhibits.
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 objects like connectivity, utilization, visitors, CDP/LLDP, and PoE utilization. You too can 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 few objects are a fairly large deal and make their lives a ton simpler.
Community topology—the massive image
Final, however actually not least, we’re going to come back again full circle to the theme of the “massive image” and visualization. The community topology view contained in the Meraki dashboard is such a robust software. If we comply with 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 units and managed Meraki units, 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 overlook why we’re right here. Visualizing your community infrastructure from a single dashboard will be one of the highly effective instruments to have in your equipment and a very easy and quick method to present rapid worth.
When you’re prepared now—nice! Right here’s our getting began information. When you’re nonetheless exploring, try our on-demand #CiscoChat the place I and a few colleagues focus on all issues cloud monitoring immediately and what’s coming subsequent.
Additionally, test again in a month for my subsequent weblog. We’ll be overlaying community troubleshooting.
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