Warm Spare Configuration

Dashboard Location: Security and SD-WAN > Configure > Addressing and VLANs > Warm Spare

High Availability Management

Warm Spare configuration in Meraki appliances provides automatic failover capabilities by maintaining a secondary appliance in standby mode, ready to assume primary responsibilities in case of hardware failure or connectivity issues. This functionality ensures business continuity through seamless failover with minimal network disruption, supporting both virtual IP addressing and uplink redundancy for critical network infrastructure. Warm Spare is essential for organizations requiring high availability, minimal downtime, and automated disaster recovery capabilities for their network appliances.

Diagram

Classes

appliance (meraki.domains.organizations.networks)

Name	Type	Constraint	Mandatory	Default Value
warm_spare	Class	`[warm_spare]`	No

warm_spare (meraki.domains.organizations.networks.appliance)

Name	Type	Constraint	Mandatory
enabled	Boolean	`true`, `false`	Yes
uplink_mode	Choice	`virtual`, `public`	No
virtual_ip1	IP		No
virtual_ip2	IP		No
spare_device	Any	String[matches: `^[A-Z0-9]{4}-[A-Z0-9]{4}-[A-Z0-9]{4}$`] or String[min: `1`, max: `127`]	No

Examples

Example-1: The example below demonstrates warm spare configuration.

This configuration establishes high availability through warm spare appliance redundancy. The example includes spare device designation, virtual IP settings, and failover parameters for automatic appliance redundancy and business continuity.

This configuration enables warm spare functionality with “enabled: true” and designates a secondary appliance using “spare_device” environmental variable, while “uplink_mode: virtual” creates shared virtual IP addresses for seamless failover between primary and spare appliances. The “virtual_ip1: 192.168.1.254” and “virtual_ip2: 192.168.1.253” provide redundant gateway addresses that automatically migrate from the primary to spare appliance during failover events, ensuring continuous network connectivity. The virtual IP mode enables both appliances to share the same public IP addresses, allowing external services and VPN connections to remain functional during appliance failures without requiring DNS or routing changes.

meraki:
  domains:
    - name: !env domain
      administrator:
        name: !env org_admin
      organizations:
        - name: !env org
          networks:
            - name: !env network_name
              product_types:
                - appliance
                - switch
                - wireless
                - camera
                - sensor
                - cellularGateway
              appliance:
                warm_spare:
                  enabled: true
                  spare_device: !env appliance_02
                  uplink_mode: "virtual"
                  virtual_ip1: "192.168.1.254"
                  virtual_ip2: "192.168.1.253"