Meraki -> NTA in 2025?

What's the current status on Meraki integration with NTA (or is it the other way around)?

I've looked at past discussions and it seems some people managed to make it work. Not me - at least not yet. I've played with it for a few hours opening the firewall rules for port 2055 on the SolarWinds server, making sure Meraki is set to send NetFlow data, the router (MX100) has SNMP monitoring enabled on all ports - still nada. Didn't try a packet capture yet to confirm NetFlow packets are reaching the Orion server. We also have a Fortigrade 60F device I could try setting up for NTA - but that one has very little traffic and we don't really need to monitor it whereas Meraki handles 99% of all traffic, and see who is talking to whom and how much could be really useful...

NTA:

Meraki:

Is there a guide on how to make it work? (Documentation on either side hasn't been helpful - at least not yet.)

Our setup:

Orion / NPM / SAM / NTA 2023.3.0
Meraki MX100, MS225 (along with MX65, 75, MS120, 130, 220 switches, various MR APs)

Thanks!

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Accepted answers

akhasheni

The culprit to the "no NetFlow traffic" issue:

"The IP of the highest numbered VLAN is used for this communication." (source: "Is there a way to set Netflow Source interface?")

E.g.:

MX polling IP is on VLAN 10
Orion/NPM/NTA IP - on VLAN 20
NetFlow traffic will be coming to NTA from the "VLAN interface IP" of VLAN 20, which NTA will discard - because it's not the polling IP of the MX device.

(Sounds like this can be fixed by putting the MX on the highest numbered VLAN, and then (1) MX polling IP and NetFlow source IP will be the same and (2) NTA will "hear" all VLANs?)

I suppose the answers then are:

[quote userid="261664" url="~/products/netflow-traffic-analyzer-nta/f/forum/105093/meraki---nta-in-2025"]What's the current status on Meraki integration with NTA (or is it the other way around)?[/quote]

It's quite broken in addition to being limited.

[quote userid="261664" url="~/products/netflow-traffic-analyzer-nta/f/forum/105093/meraki---nta-in-2025"]Is there a guide on how to make it work?[/quote]

Not that I have seen, and the documentation on either side is generally unhelpful. For instance, I have yet to see a step-by-step guide on how to set up VLANs so that (1) NTA can get NetFlow data from Meraki and (2) be able to get NetFlow data for all VLANs, not just some.

All comments

verwin_u

Hi @akhasheni

Your meraki config looks good.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Monitoring_and_Reporting/NetFlow_Overview

One of the screenshot says sw didnot receive any netflow traffic from your device. I highly recommend review it via packet capture.

Sw has validation when accepting netflow data. It has mandatory fields required before it accepts the netflow data.

https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/nta/content/nta-required-fields-sw148.htm

There are certain mx version that does not provide certain field which is mandatory in sw nta.

I strongly recommend you to reachout to sw support geek in identifying this issue as its possible that you also need to engage your mx support for certain details.

akhasheni

Seems my questions were too vague?

[quote userid="261664" url="~/products/netflow-traffic-analyzer-nta/f/forum/105093/meraki---nta-in-2025"]What's the current status on Meraki integration with NTA[/quote]
[quote userid="261664" url="~/products/netflow-traffic-analyzer-nta/f/forum/105093/meraki---nta-in-2025"]Is there a guide on how to make it work? (Documentation on either side hasn't been helpful - at least not yet.)[/quote]

I am less interested in getting my setup to work, and more - in the (answers to the) questions above. Why:

unclear if the limited integration (summary level analytics only, it seems?) can be useful to us
- I.e. can NTA be useful to orgs running Meraki MXs and MSs - anyone with real-world first-hand knowledge and experience?
Perhaps there's a good write-up somewhere describing the experience of setting a Meraki-NTA integration up, then running it in production, and getting good insights and use out of it, with dashboards and top use cases?

akhasheni

The culprit to the "no NetFlow traffic" issue:

"The IP of the highest numbered VLAN is used for this communication." (source: "Is there a way to set Netflow Source interface?")

E.g.:

MX polling IP is on VLAN 10
Orion/NPM/NTA IP - on VLAN 20
NetFlow traffic will be coming to NTA from the "VLAN interface IP" of VLAN 20, which NTA will discard - because it's not the polling IP of the MX device.

(Sounds like this can be fixed by putting the MX on the highest numbered VLAN, and then (1) MX polling IP and NetFlow source IP will be the same and (2) NTA will "hear" all VLANs?)

I suppose the answers then are:

It's quite broken in addition to being limited.

[quote userid="261664" url="~/products/netflow-traffic-analyzer-nta/f/forum/105093/meraki---nta-in-2025"]Is there a guide on how to make it work?[/quote]