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, crucial step in your journey to the cloud begins with visibility. Reasonably than attempting 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 wish to handle your community, be it digging deep into the command-line interface (CLI) or making just a few clicks within the Meraki dashboard, visualizing your whole 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 individual causes within the feedback beneath.
Image-perfect visualization
First, you need that picture-perfect view of your community. Having the ability to simply see if every part is on-line (or not) from a single platform is important to what you are promoting.
For this explicit 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 may also 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’ll be able to’t miss it! Additionally on this record, you’ll be able to 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 combined Catalyst and Meraki surroundings, you’ll be able to 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 flexibility to see all of my networks in just a few 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” swap. By clicking on the swap you’ll be able to see all the mandatory data for the swap to work. Once more, it is a monitored Catalyst 9300 swap, so that you’ll have the ability to view every part, however you’ll be able to’t make any configuration adjustments to a monitor-only swap.
Within the preliminary view of the monitored Catalyst swap, you’ll be able to view the next:
- Bodily tackle and placement
- LAN IP
- Public IP
- Gateway
- Serial numbers: Catalyst and Meraki
- Historic machine information and shopper utilization information
- The present firmware model on the swap
Swap port visibility
My private favourite half in regards to the Meraki dashboard, in case you haven’t seen, is the convenience of use. And my favourite half in regards to the switches is you’ll be able to really click on on the swap port you wish to view. This has been certainly one of my favourite issues to point out of us reside at commerce reveals.
Let’s select that enjoyable little uplink port over there, quantity 24. By clicking into that port you’ll be able to view configurations (once more, no edit on Catalyst switches) and see standing objects 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 objects are a reasonably large deal and make their lives a ton simpler.
Community topology—the large image
Final, however definitely not least, we’re going to return again full circle to the theme of the “large image” and visualization. The community topology view contained in the Meraki dashboard is such a strong device. If we comply with the identical swap 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 swap 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 might be one of the highly effective instruments to have in your package and a very easy and quick option to present quick worth.
If you happen to’re prepared now—nice! Right here’s our getting began information. If you happen to’re nonetheless exploring, try our on-demand #CiscoChat the place I and a few colleagues focus on all issues cloud monitoring at present and what’s coming subsequent.
Additionally, examine again in a month for my subsequent weblog. We’ll be protecting community troubleshooting.
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