Deploying a new Cisco Meraki vMX

Hello Alex Houghton (AP),

Thank you for reaching out. It's a common point of confusion when deploying resources in Azure to see a discrepancy between the location of a resource group and the resources contained within it.

The behavior you're observing is expected and is based on how Azure's resource management is designed. Here is a breakdown of why this is happening:
Resource Groups vs. Resources: An Azure Resource Group is a logical container for your Azure resources. The location you set for a resource group determines where the metadata for that group is stored. This metadata includes information about the resources within the group. However, the resources themselves can reside in different Azure regions from the resource group that contains them.

Deployment Process: In your case, when you deployed the Cisco Meraki vMX, you correctly selected Australia Southeast as the location for the virtual machine itself. This is the most important setting, as it determines where your vMX will actually run, affecting network latency and data residency.

Resource Group Location: The reason the resource group shows Australia East is likely because you either:

Selected a pre-existing resource group that was originally created in the Australia East region.

When creating a new resource group as part of the deployment process, the default or a previously used location was set to Australia East.Key Takeaway: There is no operational impact on your vMX appliance. Your virtual machine is running correctly in Australia Southeast as you intended. The resource group's location in Australia East only affects where its configuration and metadata are stored and does not influence the performance or location of the vMX itself.

For future deployments, it is a best practice to create the resource group in the same region as the resources you plan to deploy in it. This helps maintain consistency and avoids confusion.

It's also worth noting that some users have reported that deploying a Meraki vMX can sometimes be "finicky," occasionally failing due to issues like OS provisioning timeouts or DNS settings, and may require a complete redeployment to resolve [, ]. If you encounter further issues beyond the location discrepancy, these might be areas to investigate.

Best Regards,

Jerald Felix