Streamline Operations with Cisco Meraki and Red Hat Ansible Automation

Cisco Live North America is just around the corner, and it’s the perfect time to dive into the world of network automation. If you’re looking to streamline operations, boost efficiency, and ensure compliance, you need to check out the power of combining Cisco Meraki and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

In this blog we will explore several popular customer use cases for Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform. We will provide guidance on how to learn more, including a demo. And if you’ll be at Cisco Live San Diego, we help you plan your agenda to learn more about these use cases.

Cisco Meraki and Red Hat Ansible: better together 

For businesses with multiple branch locations or complex network infrastructures, managing IT infrastructure manually is a recipe for human errors and inefficiency, mostly due to inconsistencies in the operational procedures. Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed networking, coupled with Ansible Automation Platform, offers a robust and consistent solution to enhance your IT operations.

Let’s explore some of the top Meraki use cases that will be available with Ansible Automation Platform, in the form of a Validated Content Collection, that will simplify your operations lifecycle: branch provisioning, audit and compliance checks, configuration drift audits, and regular rotation of Wi-Fi pre-shared keys.

1. Branch provisioning: fast, consistent, and reliable

Imagine deploying hundreds or thousands of new sites, retail stores, remote offices, or even a single site. Traditionally, this process would involve hours of manual configuration for each location, increasing the risk of errors and inconsistencies. Each site might require consistent configurations for firewalls, switches, and Wi-Fi access points, all of which must align with security policies. Manual provisioning is not only time consuming but also prone to human error, potentially leading to security vulnerabilities or network outages.

With Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform, site expansion becomes a streamlined, automated process. Ansible Automation Platform allows you to create reusable Ansible playbooks, which are automated scripts that define the desired state of your network. These Ansible playbooks can interact with the Meraki API to perform configurations across all of your devices. This means you can define a template or “golden configuration” for a typical branch and then apply that configuration consistently across all new sites.

Steps required for a branch provisioning orchestrated workflow: 

• Create networks and claim devices.
• Configure gateway (firewall) and WAN.
• Configure switches.
• Configure SSID and access points.
• Automate documentation and reporting to update enterprise systems including Sources of Truth

By using Ansible Automation Platform to automate branch provisioning with Cisco Meraki, organizations can achieve a more agile, reliable, and secure network infrastructure. This approach is especially beneficial for companies with a large number of geographically distributed locations, with operation teams that have to orchestrate multiple technologies, at scale, with a centralized approach.

2. Audit and compliance check: Stay ahead of the curve

Managing configurations across a vast network with multiple locations can quickly become complex. Maintaining consistency and ensuring compliance with internal policies and external regulations is critical. This is where automating audit and compliance checks with Ansible Automation Platform becomes invaluable.

Ansible Automation Platform allows you to leverage the Meraki API using Ansible Automation Platform to compare an organization’s settings and status against a set of best practices and thresholds – uncovering configurations that should be changed.

This includes general checks, as well as Wi-Fi and switch compliance checks.

3. Configuration drift audit: maintain a source of truth for your firewall policies

Configuration drift can lead to unexpected network behavior and security vulnerabilities. With Ansible Automation Platform, you can establish a “good network” baseline—your source of truth. Then, Ansible Automation Platform compares your live network configurations to this baseline and identifies any deviations, especially in critical areas like firewall policies. You decide if you want Ansible Automation Platform to automatically correct any non-compliant configurations or create a service ticket with all the details.

By using Ansible Automation Platform to maintain a source of truth and audit for configuration drift, you can ensure that your Cisco Meraki network operates reliably, securely, and in compliance with your organization’s standards. This proactive approach greatly reduces risk and streamlines network operations.

4. Scheduled rotation of Wi-Fi pre-shared keys: enhance security

Regularly updating Wi-Fi pre-shared keys (PSK) for guest networks is a critical security best practice. In dynamic environments where numerous guests may access the network, static PSKs can become a security vulnerability. If a PSK is compromised, unauthorized users can easily gain access. A scheduled rotation of these keys significantly reduces this risk. Manually changing PSKs every month across multiple sites is a tedious and error-prone process, but Ansible Automation Platform can automate this crucial security task, ensuring consistent and timely updates.

Ansible Automation Platform can be used to generate new, strong PSKs automatically and then push these new keys to all of your Meraki access points. This can be scheduled as a recurring task, ensuring that the PSKs are rotated every month without manual intervention. This automated process not only enhances security but also frees up valuable IT resources.

Why This Matters: key advantages of Cisco Meraki and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 

By combining Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed networking with Ansible Automation Platform, organizations achieve:

• Rapid deployment 
• Proactive compliance 
• Operational stability 
• Enhanced security 

Join Us at Cisco Live North America! 

Ready to see Cisco Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform in action? Join us at Cisco Live North America! Here are a few sessions to add to your agenda that showcase the power of these technologies:

Unite Meraki, Catalyst, and ISE with Ansible – DEVWKS-2301 

• Monday, Jun 9, 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM PDT
• Speakers:
  • Francois Caen, Product Manager, Cisco – Distinguished Speaker
  • Oren Brigg, Engineering Product Manager, Cisco
  • Craig Egan, System Engineer, Cisco

Extending automation to remote branch networks (Meraki) – DEVRHL-1004 

• Check Cisco Live U.S. Catalog, multiple times available
  • Speaker: Demond Green, Specialist Solutions Architect, Red Hat

Seamless Network Provisioning: A Meraki and Ansible Lab – LABMER-1100 

• Check Cisco Live U.S. Catalog, multiple times available
  • Speaker: Daniel Chaves, Customer Delivery Architect, Cisco

Dive deeper with Red Hat content

For more in-depth information, check out the resources available from Cisco and Red Hat:

You can also:

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