Meraki MX firewall is famous for its’ sleek interface and amazing ease of use. They are also known for the fact that all their appliances and solutions are cloud-managed from the same place, and can ‘talk’ to each other.
But setting up a firewall can be a little intimidating for those who have limited experience with one. So as a service to our many Meraki customers, Corporate Armor is going to walk through the set up of a new firewall, from unboxing to unleashing. For our purposes, we will ‘set up’ a Meraki MX64. The MX64 is a hugely popular model. Most of their devices have similar set up steps.
Logging into the Meraki offline setup page
The MX64 will send a DHCP request on it’s internet port right out of the box. This allows for quick and easy setup if your ISP’s internet connection is configured to hand out dynamic addresses. However, we will be using a static public IP address.
Meraki MX firewall has a quick and easy GUI setup tool to do this with. After you power up the Meraki MX firewall, simply connect an ethernet cable from your computer to ports 1-4 on the MX64. Ensure your Wi-Fi adapter is turned off. This will allow you to browse to http://setup.meraki.com in your web browser. You do not have to be connected to the internet to reach this URL.
You will be prompted for a Username and Password to log into the device for the first time. The default credentials are the serial number of the device (all upper-case with dashes) as the username, and a blank password. The serial number can be found on the sticker on the back of the device.
Once logged in, you will be presented with the following page.
By default, the Meraki MX firewall is set to send a DHCP request on it’s internet port right out of the box. This allows for quick and easy setup if your ISP’s internet connection is configured to hand out dynamic addresses, but for our case we will be using a static public IP address.
You will be prompted for a Username and Password to log into the device for the first time. The serial number can be found on the sticker on the back of the device. Once logged in, you will see this page.
Initial IP Configuration
Click the Configure button. From the drop down menus in the Uplink Configuration section, leave the defaults for VLAN Tagging set to ‘Don’t use VLAN tagging,’ and Connection Type set to ‘Direct.’ For the ‘IP Assignment’ drop down menu choose ‘Static’. These settings will vary depending on your handoff type from your ISP.
Then, once you select ‘Static’ in the IP assignment heading, enter the static IP information and DNS servers provided by your ISP. Accept the defaults for the remaining items. Once the IP information is set, click ‘Save’ at the bottom left of the page.
Adding the Meraki MX firewall to your Meraki dashboard
Now you’ve successfully configured your new MX64 with a static IP. Right now it is starting the process of reaching out to the Meraki cloud. There’s just one more step. We need to let Meraki know that this device belongs in your particular dashboard. This involves claiming the serial number of the device and assigning it to a unique network in your organization.
To claim the new appliance and get it to show up in your dashboard, log in to your Dashboard. Click the ‘Organization’ button, and choose ‘Inventory.’
Click the ‘Claim’ button to the right, and enter the serial number in the pop up. This will add the device to your Inventory list. Once you enter the serial number, click ‘Claim’ to add it to your inventory.
Once you have claimed the device it will show up in your inventory page. It’ll also allow you to add it to a Network. To do this, select the checkbox beside the new MX device. Click the Add To button.
Then click the radio button to either add the MX appliance to an ‘Existing Network’ or to a ‘New network’
Almost there
Once that’s done, you will be able to navigate to the specific network that you assigned the MX64. Then, click on the ‘Security & SD-WAN’ button in the Meraki menu. Proceed with further configuration on the MX64.
Congratulations! You now have a functioning Meraki MX firewall. We hope this has been helpful, although it’s a pretty simple process, really. If you have any other questions about setup, operation, or pricing of your firewall, switch, access point, or anything else, just email us or call Corporate Armor at 877-449-0458. Thanks for reading!