Wireless Access

We have an old 500 controller with some old AP 65s terminated to it. We are going to move all APs to a new 600 controller. What is the easiest way to move them? Should be purge all these old APs? We are currently using DNS to make the APs find the controller. If we change the DNS to the new controller, will the APs terminate to the new controller upon reboot? Not sure what other options are available. Thanks. 

Discovery via DNS is for the Master controller.   Yes, the APs, once rebooted, will re-dns-request for aruba-master.domain when they are rebooted.  So that much will be automatic.

You will also have to keep in mind that each AP also has a 'profile' stored within it's NVRAM.  That profile could (doesn't have to, but most often does) point to the LMS-IP address which is the controller where the AP will terminate.

If you change the DNS entry without checking/changing the LMS-IP you could still have a mismatch/bad result.

You can audit/eyeball whats in LMS-IP by navigating to:   Configuration/AP-Configuration/AP-Group xxxx/edit, AP/AP-System Profile/LMS-IP == x.x.x.x   see if x.x.x.x is there or if the field is blank for all APs you have on the existing/legacy controller as a first step.

There is no LMS IP. If there is none, does changing the DNS do the trick? We reprovisioned 2 APs and changed the host controller IP to the IP of the new controller. Unfortunately, these 2 APs kept on showing in the old controller then disappear but never appear in the new controller. Not sure what is going on with these 2 but we may need to reset them.....

Good stuff.  Thanks for the quick verification.

You should also verify that the APs don't have anything else hard coded in them under Configuration/AP-Installation/pick an AP/Provision... scroll down to the 'discovery' section and make sure all fields are blank.  If they are then you should be all good with just changing the DNS entry to move things over.

You may also choose to 'disable ADP' on the existing/legacy controller to keep it from (ever) responding should an AP (for whatever reason) be trying its ADP mechanisms instead of DNS/DHCP/static settings.

That way the legacy controller won't respond and muddy the waters during the transition at all... 

Under the provision page, the only discovery with entry is the usage of  aruba-master which makes sense dns since the APs uses this as the default controller name. However, how can I disable ADP on the old controller? Thank you for your quick replies! You really are a guru!

Thx.

Here you go: 

(ArubaHQ_Calgary) (config) #adp discovery disable 

This will disable ADP on the legacy controller.   That way you can take its ability to respond to APs out of the equation for all purposes/scenarios.

Good luck!

JF

You may have already found your solution, but some comments from similiar migrations:

Items to consider:

1) Is an LMS defined in the existing AP System Profile?

2) What AP Group are they in?  Will this same group name exist in the new controller?

3) What discovery method is being used, DNS, DHCP or ADP?

Tips:

- If there is no LMS (as you indicate), you can change the aruba-master entry in DNS to the new controller, however if the original AP Group does not exist on the new controller, the APs may appear "Inactive" as they may be looking for the old AP Group they were in.  

- If the AP Groups are the same, you should be OK; if they are different, you can temporarily add a group with that name just to get them up and connected.....then reprovision to the proper group.

- If you attempt to provision from the old controller to the new IP as you indicate (through the host controller IP option), change both the host controller ip and the master controller IP.   Also, choose the "default" AP Group when doing this provisioning step so they will show up in the default group on the new controller; then you can reprovision as necessary

- when going to a new controller, keep in mind whether you have CPSec enabled or not; as this will require the AP to go through a series of reboots upon its initial connection, so be patient.