Monitoring Catalyst Wireless 9800 Controllers
Cloud Monitoring for Catalyst Wireless brings together the performance of the Catalyst 9800 wireless LAN controller (WLC) and the user-friendly interface of the Meraki dashboard, streamlining wireless operations. This dashboard offers a unified perspective of the entire network, enabling comprehensive insights into both Meraki and Catalyst networks from a single dashboard.
Where to Find Catalyst Wireless Controllers in Dashboard
Once wireless controllers have been added to dashboard networks, following the instructions in the Adding Catalyst 9800 Wireless Controller and Access Points to Dashboard document, wireless controllers can be found in the dashboard in multiple locations in the dashboard navigation menus.
To view a summary list of all wireless controllers in an Organization, go to Organization > Wireless LAN controllers.
To view a summary list of wireless controllers in a network, go to Wireless > Wireless LAN controllers > List.
For a wireless controller in an HA SSO pair, the dashboard list pages will list a single wireless controller to represent the HA system. If there is an issue with the standby unit, the wireless controller will have an alert to indicate if there is a problem with the standby wireless controller.
Summary
Selecting a wireless controller from the Wireless LAN controllers lists will open the wireless controller device page summary tab.
Port status
View the status of the wireless controller interfaces.
Port-channels
Hover over the port to view the port-channel the port is a member of and a list of all members in the port.
Port troubleshooting
Click the port from the hover over to open up the port details page. This allows you to view per-port details such as CDP neighbors, usage in bits and port statistics to use for troubleshooting.
Live data
Number of Access Points
This displays the current number of access points actively joined to the wireless controller.
This count includes ALL access points joined to the wireless controller regardless if they are supported to be monitored in dashboard.
For a list of supported access points, please see Cloud Monitoring for Catalyst Wireless FAQ.
Number of Clients
This displays the current total number of clients associated to the wireless controller.
Historical Data
Historical data metrics can be filtered to different time spans:
- Last 2 hours
- Last day
- Last week
- Last month
Connectivity
The connectivity timeline chart tracks the wireless controller's connectivity state to the dashboard. Users can hover over the timeline to view any connectivity errors that may have occurred over the selected time span.
This chart represents the wireless controller's connectivity to dashboard and does not represent the wireless controller's device uptime.
Device Uptime
The wireless controllers uptime and last reboot time stamp can be viewed in the left hand column on the wireless controller page.
Clients
The historical client chart allows users to view the number of clients that have been associated to the wireless controller over the selected time span.
CPU Utilization
The historical CPU utilization chart allows users to view the average control plane CPU utilization across all wireless controllers' CPU cores. The threshold line indicates if the average CPU utilization is greater than 80%.
Memory Utilization
The historical memory utilization chart allows users to view the control plane memory utilization on the wireless controller. The threshold line indicates if the memory utilization is greater than 88%.
Ports
Historical Data
Historical data metrics can be filtered to different time spans:
- Last 2 hours
- Last day
- Last week
- Last month
Usage
This historical usage chart shows interface usage in bits over the time period selected. The total combined usage of all ports is always displayed. To see the usage of individual ports select the check box next to the port name.
Layer 2 Interfaces
The layer 2 interface lists any physical or virtual interface on the wireless controller that does not have an IP address assigned.
| Interface | The full name of the port in IOS XE format. TenGigabitEthernet0/1/0. |
| Description | The port description as configured in IOS XE. |
| Traffic sent | Dashboard calculates the interface output bytes rate over the time span selected in the historical data time picker. |
| Traffic received | Dashboard calculates the interface input bytes rate over the time span selected in the historical data time picker. |
| Status |
This is a time chart to list the historical status of the interface over the time span selected in the historical data time picker.
|
| CDP Neighbors | The neighbor hostname and neighbor port for the interface. |
Layer 3 Interfaces
The layer 3 interface lists any physical or virtual interface on the wireless controller that has an IP address assigned.
| Interface | The full name of the port in IOS XE format. TenGigabitEthernet0/1/0 or Vlan23. |
| Description | The port description as configured in IOS XE. |
| IPv4 address | The IPv4 address assigned on the interface. |
| VRF | Indicates if the layer 3 interfaces is a member of a VRF that is not in the global routing table. |
| Status |
This is a time chart to list the historical status of the interface over the time span selected in the historical data time picker.
|
| IPv6 address | The IPv6 address assigned on the interface. |
| Traffic sent | Dashboard calculates the interface output bytes rate over the time span selected in the historical data time picker. |
| Traffic received | Dashboard calculates the interface input bytes rate over the time span selected in the historical data time picker. |
Redundancy
Redundancy for C9800 controllers is supported with High Availability SSO. Only the Active wireless controller maintains an active Meraki tunnel to the dashboard. When a switchover occurs, the Meraki tunnel will then be established on the newly Active wireless controller.
Dashboard is able to monitor the health of the HA SSO system, including the state of the standby unit as well as log and alert when a system switchover has occurred.
The wireless controller details will indicate if the wireless controller is in HA SSO mode.
The status of the HA SSO system (the active and standby chassis) allows dashboard to monitor the health of the system and alert when there are changes.
| Chassis <number> |
This identifies the chassis number of the physical wireless controller. Either chassis in the system can be the active unit regardless of the chassis number. If you would like to be deterministic of which chassis is active, you can set the chassis priority in IOS XE. |
| State |
|
| RMI | The IP address for the redundancy management interface used to check peer and management gateway reachability. |
| Cloud ID | The ID/Meraki serial number for each chassis |
| Ports | The port status for interfaces on each chassis |
Ports currently only supports the status of ports for the active unit.
Redundancy Details / Failover Event Log
Dashboard will track all HA SSO system failovers and increment the System failovers counter whenever the standby hot chassis becomes active. All failover events including the failover reason code provided by IOS XE will be logged in the failover event log.
The system failover count is tracked by dashboard when a failover is detected and may not reflect the failover count on the wireless controller.
Access Points
The APs view provides a full inventory of the access points that are joined to this wireless controller. For access points that are not supported in dashboard (1800/2700/3700 series) you will be able fo view a limited number of inventory data such as the Ap name, MAC address, IP address, Model, RF/Site/Policy Tag and Catalyst Serial number.
To view the access point page click the AP name.
The data column fields are customizable to select the data that suits your needs. Note that the serial number in this list is the Meraki Cloud ID. The wireless controller serial number is available with the Catalyst serial number column.
Select the filters menu to filter the list of access points.
When downloading the inventory to CSV or XML, the filters will not apply. However, the columns selected will be included in the downloaded CSV or XML.
Tools
Cloud CLI
The Cloud CLI troubleshooting console can be opened using the “Tools” tab of the wireless controller details page.
The console provides read-only access to "show" commands through a console emulator. When you enter a command dashboard will proxy that command to the wireless controller and display the results in dashboard exactly as they look in an IOS XE terminal.
The “Detach” button will open the console in a new tab.
Assurance Alerts
Wireless Controller
Unreachable Device
Trigger
This alert may be triggered due to a problem in the path from the wireless controller to the Meraki cloud. Since the wireless controller is no longer able to communicate with the Meraki cloud, the dashboard reports it through the alert.
The wireless controller may be unable to communicate with the Meraki cloud due to a problem in the intermediate path. You will need to troubleshoot this problem from the wireless controller, as the dashboard is not able to collect data from the wireless controller at this moment.
Access Point Count Exceeded Allowed Threshold
Trigger
This alert is triggered when the number of access points joined to this wireless controller has exceeded 2,000.
Troubleshooting
When the wireless controller access point count has exceeded this threshold, Dashboard will not be able to collect telemetry data from the wireless controller.
To restore dashboard telemetry, disjoin access points from your wireless controller until it is under the 2,000 access point threshold.
Wireless Controller Redundancy
WLC Redundancy has Member in Active Recovery
Trigger
This alert is triggered if an HA SSO wireless controller chassis is in recovery mode.
WLC Redundancy has Member in Standby Recovery
Trigger
This alert is triggered if an HA SSO wireless controller chassis is in recovery mode.
WLC Redundancy Standby Member Offline
Trigger
This alert is triggered if the standby HA SSO wireless controller chassis is NOT in STANDBY HOT state.
WLC Redundancy Failover Occurred in Past Day
Trigger
This alert is triggered when the an HA SSO wireless controller chassis failover has occurred in the last 24 hours. This occurs when there is a redundancy chassis state change and the standby hot chassis has become the active chassis.