Wireless Access

Do not want to beat a dead horse, but I am getting conflicting information.

I am getting ready to deploy 2x 7010 for a customer. They were told by Aruba rep that they can do both controllers as active with some AP's terminating on one and rest on the other.

 

From what I have read and seen, if you have two masters trying to do active/active, there will be database problems as the standby cannot terminate AP's. I know Master/Local -Active/Active works but not sure on master/master,

 

Any advise would be appreciated. thanks.

Get the Aruba REP to weigh in on this thread and we can take it from there.

 

Either someone is wrong, or there is a misunderstanding.

You can setup two scenarios:

- Master Redundancy which is active/passive. All APs terminate to a single controller and you have master-controller redundancy.

 

- Master-Local: Both controllers can terminate APs, and provide AP termination redundancy but only a single master so if the Master fails, lose configuration ability.

 

Take a look at the Campus Reduncancy VRD: http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Validated-Reference-Design/Campus-WLAN-Redundancy/ta-p/287454

 

Any other questions, post.

 

Thank you both for quick replies, confirmed kind of what I was thinking. Think there was just a misunderstanding between rep and customer. Believe he was referring to Mater/Local.

 

Thanks Guys,

I'm the customer that Phil is working with.

 

On page 100 of the Campus Redundancy VRD talks about the proposed configuration. Is that not valid anymore?

 

I think this is the configuration proposed by the SE.

Please be specific and copy and paste or screenshot what you are referring to.

I think this is what the SE was talking about.

It is valid, but it is suboptimal.  You would need Airwave to synchronize the configurations between two controllers.  It is harder to troubleshoot clients when access points are split between two access points.  It would be easier to have a master/local or master/backup master situation where all access points are on a single controller and the configuration, cpsec database and AP database are synchronized automatically.

 

Valid and suboptimal are two different things.  We would need to know much more about your deployment before we would suggest a design.  The design you posted above is valid, but it is not optimal because everything would have to be synchronized or and unified externally with a management solution.

How can we synchronize between the two controllers using airwave?

Please see the Airwave Controller configuration guide here:  https://support.arubanetworks.com/Documentation/tabid/77/DMXModule/512/Command/Core_Download/Default.aspx?EntryId=14107

Thanks for the input.

We are migrating from standalone APs, and some WLC s from different vendors, in different business units, to one single solution for the whole campus. Plan is to have three (3) SSIDs, one for internal access, one for employee BYOD and the last one for guest (captive portal with acknowledgement of the AUP and internet access).

We bought two 7210 controller, two ClearPass, hardware for a new AirWave server and 348 APs (IAP-315-US).

Internal access will vary for each business unit.

Can we start with a Master/Local (HA Active-Active) setup and at a later time add more local controllers and a Master Standby?

What do you think?

Thanks for your help.

Edgardo (Ed) Perez
Staff Analyst
Southwest Research Institute, Information Technology Center,
6220 Culebra Rd., P.O. Drawer 28510, San Antonio, TX 78228-0510
voice: (210) 522-2880, fax: (210) 522-3424
e-mail: edgardo.perez@swri.org

The 7210 controllers have a capacity of 512 APS each.

If you purchased licenses for the 384 APs, you can terminate on the 7210 controller pair using centralized licensing.  One controller could be the master and the second could be the backup master which would automatically replicate the configuration from the master controller.  That would provide redundancy for all of your access points and make your deployment fairly straightforward.  The only reason you would want to configure them as master/local is if you needed more capacity (512) than a single controller could provide.  A backup master cannot service access points until the first controller is no longer online, so it would not provide additional capacity.

 

It is much simpler from an administrative standpoint to have all of your access points on a single controller at a time.

 

ClearPass would provide authentication for all of your users and allow many options with regards to collapsing your different pockets of users into a single authentication structure.  Airwave would monitor your controllers and provide historical data.

 

Your initial "challenge" is that you would have to convert all of your Instant APs to Campus APs to make them work with the 7210 controllers.

 

 

 

I hope that makes sense.