Wireless Access

Hi,

I'm soon to be purchasing some AP/Pef Licenses for our two M3 wireless controllers.

We are running a Master/Master-Standby config via VRRP.

It has been brought to my attention that with OS 6.3 you can now do centralised licensing.

I have a few questions regarding this;

1. What happens to the current licensing on the controllers? are they classed as embedded licenses and not centralised?

2. Can I make a big jump from os version 6.1.*.* to 6.3 to accomodate this change?

3. If yes to 2, can a stable release be recommended please

4. What was the reason for this licensing change? too many complaints about license costs?

I gather its in my best interests to jump to 6.3 and save money?

Many Thanks

Ian

Some Aruba controllers came with embedded licenses.  For example, 3200XM-8-US has 8 AP licenses embedded in the hardware.  Embedded licenses will not migrate into the Centralized License Pool and stay on the controller.  All other "add-on" licenses will move into the License Pool after the feature is enabled (disabled by default).

For the upgrade process please download and carefully read the release notes from the TAC site.  They detail which version you can do a direct upgrade from and which version you may to do an intermediate upgrade to.  The current version is 6.3.1.3.

Centralized licensing was introduced to ease the burden of managing licenses on each individual controller.  Imagine if the network had tens or hundreds of controllers.  Cost of licenses on the redundant controller was an issue as well.  Before Centralized licensing the redundant controller needed to be fully licensed.  With Centralized Licensing the redundant controller does not need its own liceses and will grab them if needed due to the Primary controller failing.

Full documentation on the feature is in the AOS 6.3 Users Guide which can be downloaded from the TAC site.