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Cisco Meraki Documentation

Monitoring Catalyst Wireless 9800 Controllers

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Cloud Monitoring for Catalyst Wireless is a Meraki Dashboard Early Access Feature. Before you can add your wireless controller to dashboard you have to Opt-in to Cloud Monitoring for Catalyst Wireless. Go to Organization > Early access to enable. 

Cloud Monitoring for Catalyst Wireless brings together the exceptional performance of the Catalyst 9800 wireless controller 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. With this dashboard, users can conveniently monitor their entire network remotely, identifying and resolving problems effortlessly, regardless of their location, even if they are thousands of miles away.

Currently only one wireless controller (or HA-SSO pair) can be added to a Network. Multiple wireless controllers in a Network will be supported in the future.

Where to find Catalyst wireless controllers in dashboard

Once wireless controllers have been added to dashboard networks, wireless controllers can be found in dashboard in multiple locations in the dashboard navigation menus.

Organization: Wireless LAN controllers

To view a summary list of all wireless controllers in your Organization, go to Organization > Wireless LAN controllers. 

Wireless: Wireless LAN controllers: List

To view a summary list of wireless controllers in a network, go to Wireless > Wireless LAN controllers > List.

For 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 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.

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Port status

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View the status of the wireless controller interfaces.

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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.

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Number of clients

This displays the current total number of clients associated to the wireless controller.

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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 controllers connectivity state to the dashboard. Users can hover of the the timeline to view any connectivity errors that may have occurred over the selected time span.

This chart represents the wireless controllers connectivity to dashboard and does not represent the wireless controllers device uptime.

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.

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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%.

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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%.

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Ports

Historical data

Historical data metrics can be filtered to different time spans: 

  • Last 2 hours
  • Last day
  • Last week
  • Last month

Layer 2 interfaces

The layer 2 interface lists any physical or virtual interface on the wireless controller that has 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 spane selected in the historical data time picker.

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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 spane selected in the historical data time picker.

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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.

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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
  • Active: 
    • The chassis that is currently the active wireless controller.
  • Standby hot:
    • This chassis is in standby hot state continuously monitoring the health of the Active wireless controller via the Redundant Port. 
  • Offline:
    • The standby chassis is not reachable or in sync with the active unit
  • Standby recovery: 
    • If Gateway goes down, standby goes to standby-recovery mode. Standby means, its state is up to date with the active. But since it does not have the other resource (Gateway) it goes to Standby-Recovery. The standby shall not be in a position to take over the active functionality when it is in standby-recovery mode. Standby-Recovery will go back to Standby without a reload, once it detects that the Gateway reachability is restored.
  • Active recovery:
    • Active-Recovery is when the RP goes down. Active-Recovery does not have its internal state in sync with the Active. Active-Recovery *must* reload when RP comes up so that it can come up as Standby (with bulk sync).
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 failover's and increment the System failover's 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.

APs

The APs view provides a full inventory of the access points that are currently joined to this wireless controller. To view the access point page click the AP name. 

The data column fields are customizable to select the data that suites 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. 

 

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Select the filters menu to filter the list of access points.

 

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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.

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 have exceeded 2,000. 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, dis-join 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

Triggers:

This alert is triggered if an HA SSO wireless controller chassis is in recovery mode. 

WLC redundancy has member in standby recovery

Triggers:

This alert is triggered if an HA SSO wireless controller chassis is in recovery mode. 

WLC redundancy standby member offline

Triggers:

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

Triggers:

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.

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