Replacing a Top Level Switch

[DHR1]

We have replaced all but 1 of our HP switches with Meraki MS 250 switches. The last one to be replaced is the top level switch, which sits between the MX firewall and the rest of the network. On the HP switch, the IP config has an entry for each VLAN, and each has an assigned IP address. We use the addresses as the default gateway on each VLAN. The plan is to replace this last HP switch with an MS 250. On this new switch, do I create interfaces (Routing Page) to match the HP setup? Is that all there is to this?

[CMR]

@DHR1 that is pretty much all you NEED to do. The MS250 can of course control which VLANs go to each other switch or MX, can be a DHCP server (you will see this option when you create each L3 interface), can forward DHCP packets to another DHCP server, can control what traffic is allowed between VLANs and much more, but you don't need to configure more than you have on the HP.

[CMR]

When you create the first VLAN interface you will be asked for a default gateway and it needs to be in that VLAN, so create the one that connects to the MX first.

[GreenMan]

When you migrate, remember that the clients will have cached the mapping of the Default Gateway IP address to a MAC address on the HP switch. This will necessarily change when the HP is replaced. That ARP cache mapping will need to update, for clients to communicate outside their own VLAN. This will happen gradually over time (clients cache that for different durations), but it might take a while. For testing purposes you can either find out how to flush the cache, for laptops etc. - or just reboot the device.

[MerakiGnome]

Hi @DHR1 , when I do these types of migration I often phase them in by migrating a VLAN at a time and test as we go. Works for me especially when dealing with larger networks

[umeshcnakate]

Hi, I am having the similar situation where currently we have our L3 HP switch M3810 which we need to migrate to stack of 4 MS225 switches. Our current HP switch has all the routing done in it and i need to replicate same to Meraki. Apart from creating vlan interfaces and static routes, I’m not sure what else i need to take into consideration. Can you help in things that i need to check before migrating this