Cisco SD-WAN Interconnects

General 

Devices must be collocated within an environment where reachability between MX and Catalyst WAN Edge devices does not cross the NAT Boundary.  

 

Meraki MX Network 

• A MX Device operating in Concentrator mode 

• High Availability mode is also supported 

• If leveraging High Availability mode, the uplink configuration for the devices must be Virtual IP (VIP) 

• MX Firmware Version: 19.1+ 

Catalyst SD-WAN Manager 

• Cloud Hosted SD-WAN Manager 

• Catalyst SD-WAN Manager Version: 20.15+ 

Catalyst SD-WAN Devices 

• IOS-XE Firmware Version: 17.15.x+ 

Meraki Dashboard and CDCS Manager Integration 

By integrating the Meraki Dashboard with the Cisco delivered Catalyst SD-WAN Manager you are enabling the Meraki Dashboard to: 

• Push configuration via API to the Catalyst SD-WAN manager 

• Pull configuration via the API Catalyst SD-WAN Manager 

• Pull device information (monitoring) from the Catalyst SD-WAN Manager 

This is done by an authorization process that generates a token within the Catalyst SD-WAN Manager. This token is then provided to the Meraki Dashboard allowing/authorizing configuration and monitoring push/pull actions.  

 

SD-WAN Manager Integration

From the Organization menu, select ‘Integrations’ 

 

 

 

After reaching the integrations page, select ‘Connect’ for the Catalyst SD-WAN Option 

 

Once you’ve select the ‘Connect’ option you will be redirected to id.cisco.com for sign in. Enter your credentials for the desired SD-WAN Manager to be connected. 

 

 

After signing in you will be greeted by a page which shows your available overlays. Select the desired overlay and provide a name for the integration. 

 

After completing your integration, validate that the Catalyst SD-WAN Option within the integrations page now shows as ‘Connected’ 

Interconnect Configuration and Overview 

Cisco SD-WAN Interconnects creates up to 2 route-based IPsec VPN Tunnels between up to 2 pairs of Cisco Meraki MX and Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN appliances. eBGP peering is then deployed over the IPsec tunnel to support dynamic routing capabilities between the autonomous systems. BGP Attributes are then leveraged to create deterministic and symmetrical routing.  

Configuration 

After performing the integration with Catalyst SD-WAN select the ‘Interconnects’ option from within the Organization overview page.  

 

 

Once on the Interconnects page, select ‘Add Interconnect’ 

 

 

Provide a name for your Interconnect and select the Catalyst SD-WAN and Meraki SD-WAN Sites/networks to be interconnected.  

 

 

 

 

Once you have selected the Catalyst SD-WAN Site to be interconnected some additional information will be required. Select the desired VPN (VRF) to be shared, which interface will be leveraged, and provide a BGP ASN if not already populated.  

 

 

 

Finally, validate the populated information and select the ‘Next’ button to overview the deployment. 

 

  

After selecting ‘Add interconnect’ the Meraki Dashboard will deploy the following configuration to the devices: 

1. IPsec VPN Interfaces and tunnel configuration 

2. EBGP router configuration 

3. Route redistribution and BGP attributes 

 

Once complete, you will be able to monitor the Interconnect from the ‘Interconnects’ page as well.  

Automated Deployment Action(s) Breakdown: 

Monitoring 

Monitoring of the following items is capable from within the Interconnects page of the Meraki dashboard 

• IPsec tunnel status 

• Current status 

• eBGP Session status 

• Historical status 

• Current status 

• Routes exported 

• Routes received 

• VPN Tunnel statistics 

• Bytes in/out 

These items are represented in the screenshot below below: 

 

Integrating Catalyst SD-WAN Manager to Dashboard 

Engage Cisco Meraki technical support for further review. Upon doing so, please be prepared to provide the following information to ensure accurate and effective troubleshooting:  

• X-Request-Id header supplied of the failing request or of the POST /api/v1/organizations/<orgId>/extensions/jupiter/interconnects call.  

  • Please include a timestamp when obtaining logs. 

• This can be found in the Developer console of your web browser 

• With the X-Request-Id, we can also reference Kibana logs for errors around the request. Try replacing the existing sample request ID in the below kibana links to find details on the interconnect

• Error messages identified within the developer console of your web browser 

• Typically, these will be presented in red as 403, 502, or others. 

• To view this information, right click and “Inspect” the page, and navigate to the “Network” tab. The process will need to be reinitiated to capture the failed call. 

On the Meraki dashboard, X-Request-Id will be present in two places:

1. Organization > Integrations (Browse and My integrations)
2. Organization > Interconnects

The examples below show how to obtain the X-Request-Id alongside other useful details present in HTTP calls.

1. Organization > Integrations (Browse and My integrations)

Start developer tools in your browser before performing any operation. Navigate to the Network section in developer tools and confirm that activities are being recorded.

For the Organization > Integrations page, the administrator can use the below filter in the URL search bar to focus on the important exchanges:

regexp:overlays|registration|deployedIntegrations

The example below demonstrates the initial integration step when the list of overlays is returned to the Meraki dashboard. The overlay keyword has been used to filter the network activity.

Individual requests can be opened to collect X-Request-Id like shown in the below example:

2. Organization > Interconnects

For the Organization > Interconnects page, the administrator can use the below filter in the URL search bar to focus on the important exchanges:

regexp:/extensions/jupiter/|/dataservice/device|/dataservice/health|/dataservice/sites|configGroups|/dataservice/featureProfiles/

Interconnect Deployment