Wireless Access

Is it necessary to have the Aruba 3200 controller connected to a Radius Server?

Our Radius Server is no longer available, we can see the wireless networks but cannot connect to them. We are prompted with a Windows diagnostics error "The certificate required to connect ot this network cannot be found on this computer". However, there are no certificates configured on the controller. This all worked fine until the radius server went down. Any ideas how we can work around it without the radius server? I can access the controller via WebGUI while connected directly to the controller. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

You need to get your radius server back up and running.  There is no easy replacement for it besides another one.

HI cjoseph,

Thanks for the feedback. I am new to Aruba and confirguring it for Wireless networks and since my predecessors left no documentation on the setup of the controller or the radius server i really hope I can get some feedback here. All I have are the Internal and External IPs of the Radius Server. However, once this is configured how do i configure the radius to communicate with AD? I know it has to use LDAP in some form for authentication. What configurations would I have to complete on the Radius Server? Looking forward to any feedback.

Thanks

What radius server are you using which is unavailable?

Have you looked at the logs on the radius server to see why it's unavailable? Is the radius process broken? Can't ping it by ip? unavailable doesn't give us much to go on as to why it's not working. 

If you have AD (sounce like you do) you could stand up NPS/IAS as a radius service. I don't really like it but this would be a way to get a radius server up more quickly so you have some trouble shooting time on the other radius server. 

The radius server was a virtual server on a SAN which crashed. We have therefore lost it and would have to rebuild it.

We do have AD 2003 (soon to be upgraded). From what you are saying I can setup my AD server to also operate the radius server? 

Instructions on how to configure another instance of Microsoft IAS is here:  http://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/ArubaOS_63_Web_Help/Web_Help_Index.htm#ArubaFrameStyles/802.1x_XPClient_IAS_Config/Configuring_Microsoft_IA.htm#802.1x_xpclient_ias_config_841832995_1048908

Thanks for all the feedback. I have used the link and set up my current AD with the Radius service. However, I did not configure any server certificate for the PEAP authentication since it prompts that a certificate could not be found. There are also currently no certificates configured on the Aruba controller. However, when i try to access the wireless service i am prompted that 'certificate required for this network cannot be found on your computer". What am i doing wrong? Do I have to setup a CA on the radius server too although the controller shows no certificate configured? Please help.

Thanks

The CA should be setup in your environment.  That CA should issue a certificate to your Radius Server.  There might already be a CA in your environment that the Radius server can request a certificate from.  The controller in the majority of circumstances would not have a certificate that you would configure for Radius.