Set up Meraki Dashboard API monitoring

You can use New Relic's network monitoring agent to watch your Meraki environment.

Get started

Before you begin, make sure you have the New Relic, Docker, Meraki, and Network security prerequisites:

A New Relic account.
A New Relic .
Docker installed in a Linux host.
Ability to launch new containers via command line.
Meraki Dashboard API key for authentication.

Network firewall rules

Direction	Source	Destination	Ports	Protocol	Required
Outbound	Docker host	`ktranslate` image on Docker Hub, Quay.io, or your company's internal repository.	443	TCP	✓
Outbound	Docker host	New Relic Metric API Endpoint: `https://metric-api.newrelic.com`	443	TCP	✓
Outbound	Docker host	New Relic Event API Endpoint: `https://insights-collector.newrelic.com`	443	TCP	✓
Outbound	Docker host	New Relic Log API Endpoint: `https://log-api.newrelic.com`	443	TCP
Outbound	Docker host	Meraki Dashboard API endpoint: `https://api.meraki.com/api/v1/`	443 (default)	TCP	✓

Installation

In your existing configuration file for the SNMP agent, manually add the Meraki device object. Replace the $YOUR_DASHBOARD_API_KEY with your Meraki Dashboard API key:

devices:
  meraki_cloud_controller:
    device_name: meraki_cloud_controller
    device_ip: snmp.meraki.com
    provider: meraki-cloud-controller
    ext:
      ext_only: true
      meraki_config:
        api_key: "$YOUR_DASHBOARD_API_KEY"

Tip

This is a minimal example. Additional configuration options are available on the advanced configuration page.

Stop and remove the existing container:

bash

$# find your current container
$docker ps -a
$
$# forcibly stop and delete the target container (you may also use the container ID here in place of the name)
$docker rm -f $CONTAINER_NAME

Start a fresh container with the updated configuration file. Replace $CONTAINER_SERVICE with a unique name for the container and substitute$YOUR_NR_LICENSE_KEY and $YOUR_NR_ACCOUNT_ID with your values:

bash

$# In this example, we are assuming the default configuration file name of 'snmp-base.yaml'
$docker run -d --name ktranslate-$CONTAINER_SERVICE --restart unless-stopped --pull=always -p 162:1620/udp \
>-v `pwd`/snmp-base.yaml:/snmp-base.yaml \
>-e NEW_RELIC_API_KEY=$YOUR_NR_LICENSE_KEY \
>kentik/ktranslate:v2 \
>  -snmp /snmp-base.yaml \
>  -nr_account_id=$YOUR_NR_ACCOUNT_ID \
>  -metrics=jchf \
>  -tee_logs=true \
>  -service_name=$CONTAINER_SERVICE \
>  nr1.snmp

On a Linux host with Docker installed, use the text editor of your choice to create the configuration file you'll use to run the container. Replace $DASHBOARD_API_KEY with your Meraki Dashboard API key:

Example using vim:

bash

$sudo vim meraki-base.yaml

File contents:

devices:
  meraki_cloud_controller:
    device_name: meraki_cloud_controller
    device_ip: snmp.meraki.com
    provider: meraki-cloud-controller
    ext:
      ext_only: true
      meraki_config:
        api_key: "$DASHBOARD_API_KEY"
trap: {}
discovery: {}
global:
  poll_time_sec: 300
  timeout_ms: 30000

Tip

This is a minimal example. Additional configuration options are available on the Advanced Configuration page.

Start the network monitoring agent to poll the Meraki Dashboard API. Replace $CONTAINER_SERVICE with a unique name for the container and substitute$YOUR_NR_LICENSE_KEY and $YOUR_NR_ACCOUNT_ID with your values:

bash

$# In this example, we have saved our configuration file as 'meraki-base.yaml'
$docker run -d --name ktranslate-$CONTAINER_SERVICE --restart unless-stopped --pull=always -p 162:1620/udp \
>-v `pwd`/meraki-base.yaml:/snmp-base.yaml \
>-e NEW_RELIC_API_KEY=$YOUR_NR_LICENSE_KEY \
>kentik/ktranslate:v2 \
>  -snmp /snmp-base.yaml \
>  -nr_account_id=$YOUR_NR_ACCOUNT_ID \
>  -metrics=jchf \
>  -tee_logs=true \
>  -service_name=$CONTAINER_SERVICE \
>  nr1.snmp

What's next

You can set up more agents to complement your Meraki environment data:

To get better visibility into how your network is used, set up network flow data monitoring.
To get insights into system messages from your devices, setup network syslog collection.

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Network firewall rules

Installation

Tip

Tip

What's next

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