Hi, thanks for your question and I do hope my response answers your
question, but if you still have doubt or thoughts, please share them with
me.
The idea with buying the 8320's was to distribute very long range IDF's in
a very large warehouse and our intent was also to make them the core. But
when the time came, we discovered that the 8320 do not become a single
switch like we thought. We initially configured active gateway's alongside
a transient VLAN which required two different IP's. From the
Meraki's perspective we couldn't add two routes (two different) IP's for
the same subnet; should one of the 8320's go down. Another factor was that
the MX 83's do not have SPF+. They do have SFP (1g) which we are using to
the 8320's.
The 2930F's are in VSF and act as one switch which means the pair have one
IP addresses configured for the transient vLAN. If one member goes
offline, everything still routes and HA kicks off on the Meraki with just a
single timeout and flow continues to work. We also need the 2930's for
other 1G Copper devices like NetBoxf for the rack, NVR, MPLS handoff,
Broadband handoff, Integrated Lights Out, Management, and many more. Thing
would be very different had we purchased MX250 which has SFP+ ports, but
the cost was not worth the reward. If this was a site full of users and
workstations, then we would have considered that route.
For now, the Meraki's are connected via SFP (1G) to the 8320 which do down
convert to 1GB and in those links we are presently using VLAN1 which will
change to a NATIVE vLAN. Then we have three copper links (WiFi, Guest WiFi
and IOT). The Meraki is the core for these three networks because we have
much more control with security\zones\silo's. We are using ACL's for the
other networks running off 2930's. Which are very few, under 8 total
vLAN's\Subnets.