Network Management

I am currently tasked with the introduciton of the AirWave management station to help manage our growing wireless environment.  My employer has certain policies which mandate the use of VM instead of physical servers due to cost reasons.  They also have the mandate that any applications such as Airwave would need to support their version of Redhat linux this is for security reasons. 

I am reaching out to find out: 

1. If anyone out there has successfully installed AirWave on Redhat (RHEL6.2)?

2. Are there any detailed instructions out there which cover the installation process and I suppose the upgrade process for such a deployment? 

3. Are there any potential pitfals that I should be aware of before attempting this my self?

4. Is this even supported by Aruba in the current AMP version?  I noticed on the support pages that there are no RPM's for AMP 7.6.x. 

Thanks

I'll need to double check on a few of these items.  In the past, there have been rpm files posted in the download directory for those running AirWave in RHEL.  The majority of AirWave customers have AirWave on the default install of CentOS, but installing on RHEL is possible. 

1. I'll double check on this

2. I'll post the instructions once I've double checked status with RHEL 6.2

3. When running RHEL, be careful how many additional packages you add.  Many packages change the default behavior of the system, or take up processing power that would otherwise be utilized by AirWave.  Also, if you're used to being on the latest RPMs, that may not work out as RPMs are updated on the first release, and then maintained throughout that release's cycle to prevent too many changes to the software environment for stability.  For example: the current iteration, 7.6.0 introduced packages that were not in 7.5.7.  The packages for 7.6.1, 7.6.2, and 7.6.3 are all the same as 7.6.0 (unless there are any critical security fixes).

4. Aruba support does support both CentOS and RHEL installs.

Sidenotes:

RHEL has been recognized in the past to not always default to the custom bashrc that's built into AirWave, so some aliases will have to be typed out in order to run the desired commands.

For VM server sizing, resources should be increased 20% more to account for VM overhead.

If you plan to run 3rd party utilities, be sure to notify support as they may be directly affecting AirWave performance.

Updating my answers:

1. Yes, AirWave has been successfully installed on RHEL 6.2

2. The rpm file was redundant as everything can be done using the installation ISO and upgrade tar file

The base portion of the OS should be installed following this KB article:

http://kb.airwave.com/?sid=50140000000bEMt

And then when it comes to the AMP rpm portion -> do the following:

################################################

(https://arubanetworkskb.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/FAQ/AMP-7-6-on-RHEL-Cent-6-2)

1. Install using the .tar file

# tar xzf /root/AMP-7.6.1-x86_64-cvs.tar.gz

################################################

From there, follow the installation guide (found on the support site in documentation->AirWave->7.6)

3. I've got confirmation that the security updates do not happen for RHEL.  Upgrade output will show a message that says something to the effect "RPM management / upgrades are the responsibility of the customer when running RHEL".

4. Aruba support will still provide support.  The RPMs were removed since the installation can be achieved using the ISO and upgrade tarball.

And then my previous sidenotes still apply:

RHEL has been recognized in the past to not always default to the custom bashrc that's built into AirWave, so some aliases will have to be typed out in order to run the desired commands.

For VM server sizing, resources should be increased 20% more to account for VM overhead.

If you plan to run 3rd party utilities, be sure to notify support as they may be directly affecting AirWave performance.

Thanks a lot rgin for the detailed response! I will try to follow your suggestions and will update this post if I run into issues, etc.