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SmartPorts

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Note: Port Profiles are now part of SmartPorts.

SmartPorts - Automations is currently available in Early Access. To use this feature, please enable SmartPorts from the Organization > Early Access page on your Meraki Dashboard.

What to expect when enabling SmartPorts
When you opt into SmartPorts, you will notice the following change to how you access the feature:
  • The menu option for Switching > Port Profiles will change to Switching > SmartPorts for Network administrators.
  • For Organization administrators, the Switching > Port Profiles option will move to Organization > SmartPorts.

 

Overview 

SmartPorts aim to solve the problem of highly-repetitive and error-prone port configuration. Whether you have the same or a variety of port settings and attributes at each of your sites, SmartPorts allow you to create a set of attributes once (the Profile), that you can then bind to one or thousands of ports, making initial and ongoing configuration a breeze.

With SmartPorts, a Profile can be bound directly to a port from its configuration UI, or assigned to it dynamically, with the help an Automation, which is a user-defined sequential logic that allows the switch to detect and identify the device connected on a port and modify the port’s configuration using profiles.

Requirements, guidelines and limitations

  1. Hardware requirements: SmartPorts are supported on the MS120, MS125, MS130, MS130R, MS210, MS225, MS250, MS350, MS355, MS410, MS425 and MS450 series switches.

  2. Software requirements: While there are no minimum firmware requirements for Profiles, MS 15.21.1 or later is recommended. Firmware MS 17 introduces support for Automations.

  3. Role-based access: SmartPorts allow profiles and automations ot be created and managed at Organization-wide and Network-wide scopes. A user can access the feature either via the Organization menu or the Switching menu, depending on their administrator privileges.

  4. Automations are currently only supported in the Organization-wide scope. Only Organization-wide profiles can be applied using Automations.

  5. Organization-wide Profiles currently do not support Network-level configuration components such as Access policies.

  6. SmartPorts are currently not supported in Configuration Templates or networks bound to them.

 

How a SmartPorts automation works

A SmartPorts automation inspects the incoming traffic on a switch port for user-defined match conditions and applies different configurations to the switch port, depending on which conditions are matched. The configurations to be applied upon a match are defined using SmartPort profiles.

A match condition is a combination of Match type and Match criteria. Match type is the kind of information a switch will look into in the traffic received on the port. Supported match types are LLDP system description and MAC address. Match criteria is one or more, comma-separated values to be matched for the selected match type. 

Note: Match criteria support the use of * (asterisk) as a wild card. The supported syntaxes for match criteria are: 

  1. A case sensitive string for the LLDP system description value(s), such as Meraki MV32 Cloud Managed Security Camera or Meraki MV*.

  2. MAC address in any of the following formats: aabbccddeeff, aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff, aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff, aabb.ccdd.eeff. Wildcards can be used with any of the formats for a generic match such as aa:bb:cc*.

An automation is a sequence of rules, each of which is a collection of one or more match conditions. Match conditions in a rule operate as a logical AND. That is, all conditions in rule should match for the rule to be considered a match. For this reason, a match type can be used only once per rule. For example, multiple match conditions for LLDP system description cannot be added in a single rule. If multiple LLDP system description values, they should be entered as comma-separated values in the match criteria instead. Values provided in the match criteria operate as a logical OR, which means that any one of them being matched will be sufficient for the condition to be considered a match.

A rule, when matched, applies a single profile to the switch port. Each automation allows a default action to be used if no rules are matched. The default action can be used to apply a specific profile on the ports, or leave their configuration unmodified.

When an automation is enabled on a switch port, the switch monitors the traffic coming in on the port for a short period of time after the port is enabled or a connection is detected on it. At the end of the monitoring period, the profile mapped to the rule that has been matched is applied to the port. If multiple rules are matched, the rule with the lowest sequence number in the automation is considered as the match.

Configuration

Creating a Profile

  1. Navigate to Switching > SmartPorts > Profiles or Organization > SmartPorts > Profiles, depending on your user privileges
  2. Click Add profile to create a new SmartPorts profile
  3. Enter the required details and configuration, and click Save

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Applying the Profile to switch ports

  1. Navigate to Switching > Switch ports
  2. Select all the ports you want to apply the profile to, and click on the Edit to bring up the port configuration UI.
  3. Toggle SmartPorts profile to Enabled to expose the SmartPorts profile name drop-down list.
  4. Select the profile you want to apply and click on the Update button

clipboard_e1fb629738aaf66fc06543c05b1904b59.png

 

To apply a profile on a single switch port, you could also use the following approach:

  1. Navigate to Switching > Switches
  2. Click on the switch, and then on the switch port you want to apply the profile to.
  3. Click on the pencil icon next to Configuration to bring up the port configuration UI.
  4. Toggle SmartPorts profile to Enabled to expose the SmartPorts profile name drop-down list.
  5. Select the profile you want to apply and click on the Update button

Editing a Profile

  1. Navigate to Switching > SmartPorts > Profiles
  2. Click on the pencil icon for the SmartPorts profile you want to edit.
  3. Modify the configuration, and click Save

When you modify a profile, the configuration change is instantly propagated to all the ports bound to that profile.

Creating an Automation

NOTE : To be able to create automations, valid profiles should have been created in the Organization-wide scope. For more information on how to create SmartPorts profiles, refer to the Creating a Profile section above.

  1. Depending on your administrator privileges, navigate to Switching > SmartPorts > Automations or Organization > SmartPorts > Automations, and click on Add automation.

    clipboard_e2d396e876b7aa1799fc37b4b0789eda3.png
     

  2. Click Add trigger to bring up the Automation sequence drawer where the trigger logic can be defined. 

    clipboard_ebbabd9c9204ac75b2efb532fe9e6642f.png

  3. Specify one or more conditions to be matched and choose the profile to be applied if the rule is matched. Click Add to save the rule.

    NOTE: If an Automation sequence has multiple conditions, all of them should match for the Automation rule to be considered a match.

    A condition is matched if the value provided in the match criteria is found in the traffic received on the port for the specified match type. If the match criteria is a comma-separated list of values, only one of them needs to be found for the condition to be matched.  

    To learn more about match type, match criteria, automation sequences and the relationship between them, please refer to the How a SmartPorts automation works section.

  4. Add additional rules as necessary.

  5. Choose a default action - to be performed if no rules are matched. Here you can choose to retain the existing port configuration, i.e., leave the port configuration unmodified, or apply a specific profile.

  6. Optional: Click on the pencil icon for Target port range to apply the automation to multiple switch ports. Refer to the Applying an automation to switch ports : from the SmartPorts UI section for details.

  7. Click Save

 

Applying an automation to switch ports

From the SmartPorts UI

  1. Depending on your administrator privileges, navigate to the Automations tab on Switching > SmartPorts > Automations or Organization > SmartPorts > Automations, and select the automation to be applied.

  2. Click on the pencil icon for Target port range

                                 clipboard_efb1e353a8bfc578ecafdbb4fdc1baa7d.png

  3. Use the search and network filters to find and select the switches. Selecting a switch will automatically populate all its ports in the port range field. Please modify the range as needed

    Warning: Applying an automation to all ports of a switch or to its uplink port can affect the switch’s connectivity to the Meraki dashboard. Please ensure that the automation does not conflict with the required uplink port configuration before applying it to an uplink port.

    The auto-populated port-range excludes the current uplink port for each switch.

  4. Click Update to apply to go back to the Update automation page.

  5. Click Update to apply the automation on the switch ports.

From the Switch ports page

  1. Navigate to Switching > Switch ports

  2. Select all the ports you want to apply the automation to, and click on the Edit to bring up the port configuration UI.

  3. Select the automation you want to apply from the Port automation drop-down list and click on the Update button

                      clipboard_e02138db2f52f892b10b4798bcd0a9c0f.png

From the switch details page

To apply an automation on a single switch port, you could also use the following approach:

  1. Navigate to Switching > Switches

  2. Click on the switch, and then on the switch port you want to apply the profile to.

  3. Click on the pencil icon next to Configuration to bring up the port configuration UI.

  4. Select the automation you want to apply from the Port automation drop-down list and click on the Update button.

 

Editing an automation

  1. Depending on your administrator privileges, navigate to the Automations tab on  Switching > SmartPorts > Automations or Organization > SmartPorts > Automations

  2. Click on the automation name or the … icon > Edit on the right end of the row.

  3. Modify the configuration, and click Save

    When you modify an automation, the configuration change is instantly propagated to all the ports bound to that automation.

 

The port details UI of a port configured to use a SmartPorts Profile displays a banner highlighting that the feature is overriding its original configuration. The port settings on this screen are updated to reflect the configuration implemented by the SmartPorts profile.

                            clipboard_e4b75001ce73ec441a7fd07bbbe47e236.png

Clicking on See configuration comparisons brings up the configuration comparison table, which shows the settings that have been modified by the profile.

                               clipboard_e343b9f2a7c555a1b603b3e102c6c2656.png

The configurations from SmartPorts profiles are not currently reflected in the ports tables on the Switch > Switch ports page and the Ports tab on the switch details page.

Note: We are aware of an issue where the banner and configuration comparison UI might not show up on some ports where an Automation has applied a Profile. We expect this issue to be resolved soon.

The application of a profile as a result of an automation can be verified from the switch's event logs.

To monitor the usage of SmartPorts, navigate back to the Profiles tab on the Switching > SmartPorts or Organization > SmartPorts  page. Each profile shows the number of ports, devices and networks it is currently active on. Clicking on a profile's port link redirects you to the Switchports pages, filtered for the ports using the profile.

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Similarly, for Automations, the number of ports, devices and networks where it is active is listed against each automation.

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