Cisco dCloud

Cisco Meraki SD-WAN v2 – Instant Demo

Last Updated: 07-SEPTEMBER-2018

About This Demonstration

This guide for the preconfigured demonstration includes:

• Requirements

• About This Solution

• Topology

• Get Started

• Scenario 1: SD-WAN Troubleshooting with Meraki Insight

Requirements
The table below outlines the requirements for this preconfigured demonstration.

Table 1. Requirements

Required Optional

● Laptop ● Cisco AnyConnect

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About This Solution

SD-WAN provides optimized link utilization allowing organizations to provide high availability and efficiency using multiple links at
their remote sites. Meraki’s SD-WAN technology leverages Auto-VPN building upon and enhancing an established technology
versus building a brand new solution. Leveraging Layer 3 and Layer 7 rules combined with custom performance classes, IT teams
can pick the optimal path for internal and cloud based applications in their infrastructure based on the health of the uplink in real
time. Combined with application and network visibility through Meraki Insight, the Meraki platform provides a holistic view into your
application and network health.

Solution Components:
Meraki MX

Embedded Security, VPN, 4G LTE and SD-WAN in a single box.

Meraki SD-WAN

Transport Independence -- Easy-to-configure IPsec overlay using Meraki Auto VPN

Application Optimization -- Centralized network visibility and control

Intelligent Path Control -- Policy-based routing: Traffic path assigned based on source, destination, or application and Dynamic
path selection: Traffic path chosen per-application based on loss, latency, and jitter

Secure Connectivity -- Intuitive, scalable VPN solution to connect remote sites with ease (Auto VPN) and AES encryption to
ensure data privacy

Meraki Insight

Meraki Insight helps IT administrators optimize the end user experience, significantly reducing the time it takes to isolate network
or application problems that lie beyond the LAN, and create happy, productive users.

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Topology
This content includes preconfigured users and components to illustrate the scripted scenarios and features of the solution. Most
components are fully configurable with predefined administrative user accounts. You can see the IP address and user account
credentials to use to access a component by clicking the component icon in the Topology menu of your active session and in the
scenario steps that require their use.

Figure 1. Physical Topology

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Get Started
BEFORE PRESENTING

Cisco dCloud strongly recommends that you perform the tasks in this document with an active session before presenting in front
of a live audience. This will allow you to become familiar with the structure of the document and content.

It may be necessary to schedule a new session after following this guide in order to reset the environment to its original
configuration.

PREPARATION IS KEY TO A SUCCESSFUL PRESENTATION.

Follow the steps to schedule a session of the content and configure your presentation environment.

1. Initiate your dCloud session. [Show Me How]

2. Click Catalog and select Instant Demo from the side bar. This lists all the dCloud Instant Demos.

3. Click the appropriate View button.

NOTE: Alternately, you can use the Search Catalog box to search for the Instant Demo name.

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Scenario 1. SD-WAN Troubleshooting with Meraki Insight

This scenario looks at the combination of Meraki Insight and Meraki SD-WAN in the same platform to find and fix an application
problem.

In this demo you will:

• Indentify an appllication issue via Meraki Insight

• Idnetify the users with application issues

• Identify how SD-WAN rules can alleviate the application problem

• Confirm user experience is resolved

Steps

DIALOGUE DEMONSTRATION STEPS

Ikarem Inc is embarking on a major 1. From the demo, change the network to Network and App Assurance
business transformation journey. They are Branch 1 by clicking on the current network, typing in Branch 1, and
looking to leverage the cloud to accelerate selecting the network.
their business objectives and streamline
their operations. However they also require
identity data should be kept in house for
compliance purposes. They are a true
hybrid application organization leveraging
the cloud where it make the most sense.

Ikarem Inc is planning a small pilot of 3

store to roll out their new system which
includes a complete revamp of their
organization. Dual networking links from
dual providers, applications moving to the
cloud, databases installed in their new
Cisco Datacenter. On the first day of the
pilot business applications are inconsistent
and the new network is slow. Managers are
complaining to go back to the old system,
end users are frustrated. The business has
tasked IT to fix the problem, this system
must work to keep them ahead of the
competition.

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DIALOGUE DEMONSTRATION STEPS

Since Ikarem Inc knew how important this 2. Select Insight > Web Application Performance.
application roll out was they invested in the
Meraki Platform including Meraki Insight.
They start their trouble shooting at Meraki
Insight (2) and observe the Internal
Database is having issues.

By investigating the Internal DB application 3. Click Internal DB.

(3) they see that Network and App
Application Branch 1 is having issues, so
they dive deeper to investigate (4).

The box of intelligence (5) tells us that

there is Slow Network and Slow WAN
detected.

4. Click View Trends under Network Application Branch.

5. Highlight the WAN issues currently effecting the network.

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DIALOGUE DEMONSTRATION STEPS

By looking at the uplinks (6) we see that 6. Click Uplinks on Meraki Insight.
one of the uplink has a low score indicating
poor performance (7).

By filtering out the low scoring uplink (8)

and investigating the clients (9) we can see 7. Highlight the Monkeybrains.net network with the lowest score.
all the clients are having a bad score.

8. Click the low scoring Monkeybrains.net uplink and click View this uplink
only.

9. Click Clients.

Through investigation we see the clients all 10. Click Client detail to see the IP address.
have 192.168.x.x networks. (10)
NOTE: Ignore any device with a 2 after the name. They appear due to an
Ikarem INC current architecture is an
unscheduled uplink failover and should be ignored.
active-failover configuration with plans to
add SD-WAN as phase 2 of the project.
However IT would like to run a test to
determine if a new SD-WAN Rule could
positively impact this situation

IT is planning to set up a new network on

172.16 to determine if the rule is working.

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DIALOGUE DEMONSTRATION STEPS

First we want to confirm the path the users 11. Select Security Appliance > VPN Status.
are currently taking. We check the path of
the users through the VPN Status (11)
page and find our 192.168 clients sending
traffic (12).

12. Type 192.168 into the search box under Uplink Decisions.

We see that the clients who are having 13. Click WAN 1 under the Uplink decision.
issues are sending their clients over WAN
1 unless there is a failover.

By diving into WAN 1 (13) we see that the

link is saturated and not performing well
14. Highlight the poor performance on the high latency of this line.
(14).

By moving to configure SD-WAN Rules

(15) we can see the 192.168 network is
only failing over based on a hard down 15. Click Traffic Shaping Page.
(16).

16. Highlight the 192.168.0.0/16 rule Prefer WAN 1. Fail over if uplink down.

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DIALOGUE DEMONSTRATION STEPS

IT is going to leverage a customer 17. Highlight the new Cloud Application performance Rule.
performance class (17) on a new SD-WAN
rule for the 172.16 network (18) to failover
based to their secondary link when the link
is degraded.

IT verifies that the SD-WAN rule is

functioning currently by investigating the
18. Highlight the new 172.16.0.0/12 network uses performance classes for
VPN status (19) filtering out by our new
performance based SD-WAN.
user group (20) verifying that the
performance rule is sending the 172 users
(21) on the right link, which is WAN 2 (22).

19. Select Security Appliance > VPN Status.

20. Type 172.16 into the search box under Uplink Decisions.

21. Highlight the performance rule is working by sending traffic over WAN 2.

22. Highlight traffic is flowing over WAN 2 as expected.

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DIALOGUE DEMONSTRATION STEPS

By leveraging Meraki insight (23), and 23. Select Insight > Web Application Performance.
checking the internal database (24), but
this time filtering over the healthy link (25)
we can see a positive user experience for
this application (26).

Now that these users are going over the

right link the Data base application is stable 24. Click Internal DB and View Trends.
fixing the root of the problem for the
applications in the business.

25. Click Uplinks and then filter by the Monkeybrains.net link with the
positive score.

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DIALOGUE DEMONSTRATION STEPS

26. Click Clients and highlight the positive user scores.

Conclusion
The Meraki platform allows IT admins to work simple even in the most complex environments. Meraki’s powerful SD-WAN solution
combined with network and application assurance give IT admins the power and efficiency to optimize the end users experience
accelerating business outcomes.

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