Task 2 - Prepare your environment

The best method to start working with Meraki as Code is to clone our example repository. This repository contains the proper directory structure and base files required.

In this section, you will clone the repository and then setup Meraki as Code. This includes setting the Python virtual environment, installing necessary packages, and configuring Terraform to work with the Meraki Dashboard.

Before we extract the example repository, we need to understand how the Network as Code repositories contains a series of TAGS to match the versions requirements. Why is this? Each release version of the capability is tied to specific versions of the components. In some releases, breaking changes are introduced that require different versions of specific packages. In the example repository, you can see the list of version tags that are available. As of this writing:

Using a tagged release ensures that all components — the Terraform module, provider, and example configuration — are a tested, compatible combination. The main branch may contain in-progress changes that have not been validated together. A Git tag is immutable: once created, it always points to the exact same commit, giving you a reliable and reproducible starting point.

From your browser, open the Code Server IDE using the following URL: Code Server

In this guide, we will use VS Code for demonstration purposes. All screenshots are from VS Code, but the steps are generally applicable to other editors as well.

To access the terminal, click on the menu icon on the top left and select “Terminal” > “New Terminal”. This will open a terminal window at the bottom of the Code Server interface.

Meraki as Code uses Terraform (or OpenTofu) as its core automation engine, alongside Python-based tools such as nac-validate and nac-test. This guide walks you through setting up an environment with all the required dependencies so you can run the full as-code workflow.

For the execution of this lab we will start from network-as-code directory in your home directory.

pwd

should give you output similar to:

/home/dcloud/network-as-code

if you are not in the network-as-code directory, navigate to it using:

cd /home/dcloud/network-as-code

Create a virtual environment named meraki-as-code using the Python version you installed. Then use pyenv activate to activate the virtual environment. This will ensure that any Python packages you install will be contained within this environment and won’t affect other Python projects on your system.

Verify Python Version Installed:

python --version

Should give you output:

The `python' command exists in these Python versions:
  3.12.10

Create and activate the virtual environment:

pyenv virtualenv 3.12.10 meraki-as-code
pyenv activate meraki-as-code

Now you should see your meraki-as-code virtual environment activated:

(meraki-as-code) dcloud@lin-wkst1:~/network-as-code$

PIP is a package manager for Python that allows you to install and manage Python packages. It is recommended to update PIP to the latest version before installing any packages.

pip install --upgrade pip

The first step is to clone the example repository that contains the necessary files and configurations for Meraki as Code. Using the GIT command you will be doing a clone of the example repository into a directory named meraki-as-code in your network-as-code home directory.

We will specifically clone the tag v0.1

cd ~/network-as-code
git clone --branch v0.1 --depth 1 https://github.com/netascode/nac-meraki-example meraki-as-code

Once completed you should be able to see the structure inside of the IDE.

After cloning the repository, you will need to remove the .git directory. This is because you will be using this repository as a starting point for your own Meraki as Code project. We provide these example repositories as “starting points”, but you will not be using this repository for yourself. When you delete the .git directory, you will no longer be able to use GIT commands to manage the repository until the repository has been initialized again, which you will do later in this guide.

switch to the cloned directory and list files.

cd meraki-as-code/
ls -la

You should see directory as below

(meraki-as-code) dcloud@lin-wkst1:~/network-as-code$ cd meraki-as-code/
(meraki-as-code) dcloud@lin-wkst1:~/network-as-code/meraki-as-code$ ls -la
total 72
drwxr-xr-x 8 dcloud dcloud  4096 Mar  6 07:13 .
drwxrwxr-x 3 dcloud dcloud  4096 Mar  6 07:13 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 dcloud dcloud  4096 Mar  6 07:13 .ci
drwxr-xr-x 2 dcloud dcloud  4096 Mar  6 07:13 data
drwxr-xr-x 8 dcloud dcloud  4096 Mar  6 07:13 .git          >>>> to be deleted
-rw-r--r-- 1 dcloud dcloud   321 Mar  6 07:13 .gitignore
-rw-r--r-- 1 dcloud dcloud  9875 Mar  6 07:13 .gitlab-ci.yml
drwxr-xr-x 2 dcloud dcloud  4096 Mar  6 07:13 lab-data
-rw-r--r-- 1 dcloud dcloud 11357 Mar  6 07:13 LICENSE
-rw-r--r-- 1 dcloud dcloud   204 Mar  6 07:13 main.tf
-rw-r--r-- 1 dcloud dcloud    54 Mar  6 07:13 README.md
drwxr-xr-x 2 dcloud dcloud  4096 Mar  6 07:13 rules
-rw-r--r-- 1 dcloud dcloud  2187 Mar  6 07:13 schema.yaml
drwxr-xr-x 3 dcloud dcloud  4096 Mar  6 07:13 tests
drwxr-xr-x 2 dcloud dcloud  4096 Mar  6 07:13 workspaces
(meraki-as-code) dcloud@lin-wkst1:~/network-as-code/meraki-as-code$

Run the below command to remove the .git

cd ~/network-as-code/meraki-as-code
rm -rf .git

Terraform is shipped as a single binary file and has no external dependencies. In this lab, Terraform comes pre-installed. Confirm it is available by checking the version:

terraform -v

If you see a version number, Terraform is ready to use. Do not worry about the Terraform version in this lab.

Terraform v1.13.4
on linux_amd64
+ provider registry.terraform.io/ciscodevnet/meraki v1.9.0
+ provider registry.terraform.io/hashicorp/local v2.7.0
+ provider registry.terraform.io/netascode/utils v1.0.2

Your version of Terraform is out of date! The latest version
is 1.14.7. You can update by downloading from https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/install

In addition we must also install the two packages part of Network as Code for testing and validation.

• nac-validate
• nac-test

Run the pip commands as below

pip install nac-validate
pip install nac-test

Let us do a quick recap of the file structure of the repository, as this will be important for you to understand as you start working with the code. The file structure is designed to be simple and intuitive, but it is important to understand the purpose of each file and directory.

meraki-as-code/
├── .ci/                  # CI/CD helper scripts (GitLab comments, Webex notifications)
├── data/                 # Your YAML data model files go here (empty by default)
├── lab-data/             # Pre-built YAML files for each lab exercise step
│   ├── 01_create_org.nac.yaml
│   ├── 02_configure_network.nac.yaml
│   ├── 03_add_wireless.nac.yaml
│   ├── 04_switch_settings.nac.yaml
│   ├── 05_add_firewall_sdwan_settings.nac.yaml
│   ├── 06_scale_network.nac.yaml
│   ├── 08_branch_variables.nac.yaml
│   └── 08_templates.nac.yaml
├── rules/                # Custom nac-validate Python rules
├── workspaces/           # Separate Terraform workspace for template rendering
├── tests/                # Templates for Post change testing
├── .gitlab-ci.yml        # GitLab CI/CD pipeline definition
├── main.tf               # Root Terraform configuration (references the NaC Meraki module)
└── schema.yaml           # YAML schema for data model validation

Environment variables are key-value pairs set in your shell session that allow tools like Terraform to read configuration values — such as API keys, organization IDs and secrets — at runtime without hardcoding them into your files.

To set the environment variables, you will need to create a .env file in the root of the cloned repository. This file will contain the necessary environment variables for connecting to the Meraki Dashboard and executing the automation. This file is not committed to the repository, so you will need to create it manually. It is also ignored by git on purpose to ensure that you don’t accidentally commit sensitive information.

The variables used by the automation are created in the .env file and then loaded into your shell session.

Create a file named .env in the root of the cloned repository. Run the following command.

cd ~/network-as-code/meraki-as-code
code-server .env

In the opened file you will add the following content:

export secret_password="C1sco12345!!66"
export MERAKI_API_KEY=<add your own API key here>
export org_email=demouser@example.com

The secret_password variable is used for the lab exercises, and you can keep the sample values or change them as you see fit.

Leave the org_email as it is, you should not use the same email that was used to create MERAKI_API_KEY. If you have additional email, you may use.

As you can see, the MERAKI_API_KEY variable is where you will add your own API key. You already have the API key from the previous steps, so you can copy and paste them into the file.

Then save the file.

Once the file is saved, load the environment variables into your current shell session by running:

source .env

This reads the .env file and exports each variable so that Terraform and other tools can access them for the remainder of your session.