Meraki System Maintenance Overview and FAQ

How will upcoming Meraki system maintenance be communicated?

At present, this type of maintenance is intended to be completely transparent to the end customer experience. Banners which indicate the maintenance window are displayed on all organizations that reside on the server to undergoing maintenance. During this planned downtime window, the ability to access the dashboard as well as configuration options and services that rely on the Meraki cloud may be affected, as detailed in the following sections.

What is the impact of Meraki system maintenance on an organization? 

System maintenance has no impact on the operation of Meraki devices that are deployed in an active network in regards to their ability to pass traffic. During the maintenance window the maintenance occurs in, there is an expected brief period of planned downtime where the Meraki dashboard will be unavailable to administrators. Attempts to login will result in a redirection to a server maintenance page instead. The following dashboard functionality may be affected:

• Meraki dashboard - The Meraki dashboard for the respective org will not be accessible.
• SNMP - There will be no responses to SNMP requests to the dashboard and SNMP traps will not be sent from the dashboard. SNMP polling a device will not be impacted.
• Dashboard API - There will be no responses to dashboard API requests.
• Systems Manager - End user devices will not be able to be enrolled
• Email alerts - will not be sent
• Webhook events - will not be sent

Once maintenance is complete, devices will resume communicating with the Meraki cloud, and administrators will be able to login to the dashboard to configure devices and manage their organization.

What is the impact of Meraki system maintenance on device operation?

All devices will continue to function per their last downloaded configuration during this maintenance downtime; however, anything that relies on the Meraki cloud for functionality will be briefly impacted during this planned downtime. While the backend server is being worked on, the following functionality may be affected:

• Meraki cloud authentication - This can impact client VPN, if configured to use Meraki cloud authentication instead of Active Directory or a custom RADIUS server
• Splash pages - Both Meraki-hosted and self-hosted, as the dashboard handles the redirection from clients to the self-hosted splash page
• WPA2-Enterprise with Meraki authentication - Clients will not be able to authenticate against wireless networks configured in this manner
• WPA2-Enterprise with Radius Proxy authentication - Clients will not be able to authenticate against wireless networks configured in this manner

Once the Meraki backend server maintenance is complete, all of these impacted services should be available without any need for reconfiguration or remediation on the customer's part.

Is there anything customers can do to plan around or mitigate the potential impact of this maintenance?

This planned downtime is essential to the continued health and stability of the Meraki dashboard and Meraki cloud. As such, there is no way to opt-out or avoid the brief downtime caused by this maintenance.

Validating a few configurations prior to the maintenance can help ensure the network does not experience any additional downtime as a result of a potential misconfiguration:

• Ensure all Meraki API requests point to api.meraki.com and not to a specific Meraki server hostname/IP. For more information refer to Cisco Meraki Dashboard API.
• Ensure all SNMP requests point to snmp.meraki.com and not to a specific Meraki server hostname/IP. For more information refer to SNMP Overview and Configuration.
• Ensure that the firewall is configured to allow all subnets of the Meraki cloud for your organization(s). To see the complete list of specific IP addresses and ports to allow in your firewall refer to Upstream Firewall Rules for Cloud Connectivity.
• If your organization is now hosted on a new server (log into Meraki dashboard in the browser and reference the "nXXX" in the URL field) ensure Meraki Systems Manager has the server ID updated in the server URL field for Windows Profile Installation for new devices or re-enrolling existing devices.
• If your organization is now hosted on a new server (log into Meraki dashboard in the browser and reference the "nXXX" in the URL field) ensure Cisco ISE has the server ID updated in the Setup URL for Meraki Systems Manager used as an external MDM.

Is there any event log or email alert generated by the maintenance as a result of device-based reporting?

This maintenance should not generate any email alerts from the Meraki dashboard. Additionally, devices should not report any abnormal event log messages under the Network-wide > Event log section as part of this maintenance.

Will Meraki server maintenance have to be requested if a customer is expanding into a new region?

No. Meraki server maintenance is performed to maximize the reliability and performance of the Meraki cloud, and is not something that can be requested by a customer, nor is it required for a customer that is expanding into other global regions. When expanding into a new region, the customer will need to create a new organization in the appropriate region as outlined in our article, Creating a Dashboard Account and Organization. Note that multiple organizations can be linked together under a single login by using the same username and password when creating a new account/organization.