
Detailed Firmware Status and Security – Building a Scalable Foundation with Dashboard – Cisco Meraki
You can find more detailed visibility regarding firmware security and status across the organization by navigating to Organization > Firmware Upgrades and clicking the All Networks tab, shown in Figure 3-5. This page provides a detailed overview of every network within the organization and its current firmware-related statuses.
Figure 3-5 The All Networks View of the Firmware Upgrades Page for the Meraki HQ Organization
As shown in Figure 3-5, you can open the Status drop-down menu to quickly highlight networks with their current firmware in Critical or Warning states, like in Figures 3-6 and 3-7, respectively. Networks have a Warning status when their currently running firmware has an end-of-support date set within the next 6 months, and networks have a Critical status when the running firmware is past the end-of-support date. This option is one way to quickly see what sites are potentially in a time-sensitive situation that needs quick attention.
Figure 3-6 Networks in the Meraki HQ Organization That Have Critical-Level Firmware Alerts
Figure 3-7 Networks in the Meraki HQ Organization That Have Warning-Level Firmware Alerts
Getting to know the current status of all your networks and prioritizing sites that require security patches helps to ensure that your networks are up to date on security posture, compliance, and availability.
Proactive Replacements
Because Cisco Meraki strives for the highest-quality hardware and user experience possible, much of the Meraki hardware comes with a lifetime replacement warranty. However, no mass-manufacturing process is perfect, and sometimes a problematic component might not be discovered until long after the equipment has been manufactured and sold. In the unlikely event there is an unforeseen product defect that Meraki is unable to address before distributing the equipment to customers, the Meraki platform is capable of handling the complex task of tracking known hardware or product defects and proactively alerting administrators who manage potentially affected devices so that they can replace those devices before they fail or cause a significant impact to operations. An excellent example of a defect that produced an industry-wide impact is the Intel clock component failures that occurred around 2018.
While Meraki will actively alert any customer who may be operating an affected device in which a defect is discovered, organization administrators can always check at any time to see if any devices in their organization are eligible for a proactive replacement program. To do so, open the Help menu at the top of any Dashboard page and click the Hardware Replacements link.
Pro Tip
The proactive replacement program is different from the proactive RMA process available for devices that have failed outside of a known mass defect.