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Access network design for branch, remote, outdoor, and campus locations with HPE Aruba Networking access points and mobility controllers.
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Consolidating 25+ Master controllers down to 4 Master/Master-Standy sets

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  • 1.  Consolidating 25+ Master controllers down to 4 Master/Master-Standy sets

    Posted Mar 13, 2014 07:30 PM

    Our deployment consists of 120+ controllers with 25+ of them being Master Controller.  We have a wide varitey of models from 800 to M3K Controller cards.  Mostly consisting of 3600 controllers.

     

    So my first issue is we either have AOS 3.4.5.2 or 6.1.4.7.  We will be upgrading the capable controllers to 6.3 soon, but that's another project in itself.

     

    About 30 different SSID's for data, video, and scanners

     

    These controllers are in all 50 states + Korea.  And have different links to datacenters via VPN tunnels.

     

    Have you consolidated your Master controllers?  What issues did you run into?  Which first steps should I take.

     

    Basic White Paper to follow after planning is completed!!!


    #3600


  • 2.  RE: Consolidating 25+ Master controllers down to 4 Master/Master-Standy sets

    EMPLOYEE
    Posted Mar 14, 2014 10:00 AM

    That is a very onerous task you have in front of you. I wouldn't be able to go through everything and you might want to see out an partner's/integrator's help if you're not 100% sure you have a handle on it. My 2 cents:

     

    * SPend most of your time making sure AND validating that any controller you are decommissioning, has the proper elements established on the new target controllers (VAPs, VPN Tunnels, etc, etc). The old adage of measure twice, cut once is more like 'Check configs 10 times, cut once'.

    * Be generous with outages, as it may take longer than you think

    * How are your APs provisioned/how do they find the master? If DHCP Opt 43, don't forget to change the IP, if DNS, don't forget to upddate the DNS servers.

    * I don't have your network topology, but I would say get everything at the same code level, then slowly migrate groups to new controllers. 

    * Don't take any controllers down until you are fully migrated, in case you have to roll back

     

    Good luck, be patient, take it in small steps if you can.