Controllerless Networks

We're new Aruba customers, and we're just getting started setting things up.  We're looking at some of the documentation on these two products and it looks like there are vastly different requirements depending on what you read, as well as between the stated vmWare specs and the hardware appliance specs. 

We're just curious how big others have built their ClearPass and AirWave servers that they have virtualized?

For a frame of reference, we are getting just over 3,000 225 AP's, and 75,000 ClearPass devices (3 servers).

Our main questions are around the following:

ClearPass:

Their appliance has 24 processor cores, which is what they say you should have to get full performance.  So for just these 3 boxes I'd need 72 cores? Also, their appliance has ~1.8tb of usable disk, they ask for 1tb in a virtual environment, do you really need this much?

AirWave:

The main concern we have here is iops.  Our SAN, configured as it is has ~6,000 iops.  For AirWave with 4,000 devices, they are asking for 2,400 iops for Airwave if you build your own server (20% more for virtual).  However, their hardware appliance only has 8 15k disks in it? Isn't this only ~800iops? Why would you need so much more for your own hardware or virtual?

The other item is disk space.  They are asking for 1tb if you build your own, but the appliance only has 438gb?

The worst part is, I'm afraid if we have any issues down the road, and don't meet their hardware specs, we'll be out of luck until we get up to their spec.  So I'm just doing some research now to see what everyone else is doing.

Thanks for the help in advance!

Mike

They do, but in that document is this line:

So that tells me that you really need to spec out your VM to match their hardware spec? Which is 24 CPU's.  I'm just wondering if that's what everyone is doing? Also, the appliance has 1.8tb of disk, do we really need that much?

Thanks,

Mike

Follow the sizing guide, yes. Otherwise you will very likely find yourself with open TAC cases and sub-par performing Clearpass appliances. Note that the sizing guide is there for both current software and features as well as future features. To support the auth rates, numbers of users, logging, etc, does indeed require a big server.

There are numerous cases where customers tried to go 'thin' and had to rectify it later. 

Jerrod,

What about the discrepancy between the AirWave specs required if you're building your own server (or VM) and the appliance specs? The appliance is considerably less in processor, memory, and disk?

Thanks,
Mike