Wireless Access

Hi

perhaps this question is too simple but i did not found a way to preconfigure a large number of APs.

We have 1000 new APs and i do not want to unbox them all before installation, so my plan is to scan all mac adresses on the boxes to preconfigure them e.g. in an cli script or similar.

Does anybody have an idea how to deal with it?

Assuming this is a controller based solution (and you're leaving CPSec enabled) you can add APs to the Campus Whitelist and they will be provisioned in the AP group you specify when you provision them.

To add an AP to the campus AP whitelist:

(host) #whitelist-db cpsec add mac-address <ap_mac_address>

ap-group <ap_group>

ap-name <ap_name>

description <description>

Helpful link.

I'm sorry for the missing information.

Yes it is a controller based environment with campus APs.

But CPSec is not enabled.

Is there no other way to deal with it?

I am not sure you can pre-provision them from the cli, but there are commands that can be used to rename them and place them in ap-groups.

(Lab-Master-02) #ap-rename ?
ap-name Rename AP with this name
serial-num Rename AP with this serial number
wired-mac Rename AP at this MAC address

(Lab-Master-02) #ap-regroup ?
ap-name Regroup AP with this name
serial-num Regroup AP with this serial number
wired-mac Regroup AP at this MAC address

Thanks but that is not the solution because if the ap is not known by controller this commands will not work:

AP with MAC address xx:xx:xx:xx:xx not found.

You can use the commands after the APs have been connected to the controller then. It is still much quicker than configuring them one at a time.

Yes it is quicker, but i have to wait till our customers get them online. And customers will connect the APs not all at same time so customers will have to contact us several times. So preconfiguration would be much more comfortable.

No other way? 

Something related to the Campus AP whitelist may work. I have not used that.

I tried that already. CPsec is still not active but i manually add a mac adress to campus whiteliste an assign an ap group. But that has no effect. AP boots and stays in default group.

Changing default group settings is not recomended i think.

Have you asked your Aruba SE or support? They are usually good at finding any answers.

What you are asking for may be an enhancement Request which would be handled by the SE anyway.

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wrote:

I tried that already. CPsec is still not active but i manually add a mac adress to campus whiteliste an assign an ap group. But that has no effect. AP boots and stays in default group.

 

Changing default group settings is not recomended i think.

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FlorianKueck,

If you do not have CPSEC on, changing the whitelist will not change anything.

Deploying many APs is more about the process, than anything else.  In a very orderly deployment, the admin will plan where every AP will be on the map, and give the map to the installer and tell him where to put them.  In reality, many things happen, like mixups and lost APs, so it is better to give the installer a map and let him tear off the AP sticker and put it on the map where he installed each AP.  Later, when all the APs are up, you can go back and assign each AP on the map a name and put it into an ap-group.  The APs will also have the correct firmware and you will be able to see what APs have come up from what is already deployed on the map.  Based on how you are deploying, it might make sense to make the default ap-group configuration the same as your production configuration, so that newly mounted APs can accept clients and you can see how far along your deployment is going by seeing how many clients are online.  Again, this may or may not work for you.

Pre-provisioning APs is fine, but in the real world, many things happen that would make preprovisioning less ideal.

There are quite a few users who have gone through these deployments and it would good if they could share their own tips to this thread so that you can have the best ideas to work with.

wrote:

We have 1000 new APs and i do not want to unbox them all before installation, so my plan is to scan all mac adresses on the boxes to preconfigure them e.g. in an cli script or similar.

 

Does anybody have an idea how to deal with it?

---

Firstly there is no way to pre-provision campus APs unfortunately, so depending on your comfort with Linux/scripting/SNMP, I would solve this in two parts. 

First, get your hands on Aruba's AP installer App in the play store (Android only I presume) and use it to scan the barcodes and mac addresses of your APs one by one. The app lets you tag various info into the record, such as the ap name and a field for 'notes' that you can store the desired AP group name in.

Click your way through the APs then email yourself the result. The result is a .csv file, which can be easily turned into CLI commands that can be cut and paste into the CLI once the APs are up.

Sample of the .csv

$ cat "AP Installer app log file_2018_0130_115039.csv"
recordId, recordName, recordMac, recordSerNum, notes, photoList size, floorView size, latitude, longitude, floorId, floorIndex, touchPointX, touchPointY, floor width, floor height, floor dimensions units, streetAddress
0,ap1-l2-zzz,6CF37FAA6FD8,AX0119921,building-1,0,0,0,0,not found,-1,0,0,0,0,,
1,ap2-l3-xxx,C8B44DCE940E,CNDHJ0T1J6,building-2,0,0,0,0,not found,-1,0,0,0,0,,

you can either store this as some sort of lookup database, or, you can slice it up into CLI commands with some shell/perl/python scripting, e.g. once you tokenise the csv, you just generate a bunch of CLI commands using some pseudo code like this, and then just paste it into the CLI 

conf t
[for loop that loads $macaddr, $aproup and $newname] {
 provision-ap read-bootinfo ap-name $macaddr
   ap-group $apgroup
   ap-name $newname
   <other stuff>
   reprovision ap-name $macaddr
 !
}

Part 2: automation.... if you saved the AP installer output in some common location then you can go down the path of auto provisioning by (ab)using SNMP traps that the controller will send when the AP comes up. With some googling and glue scripts, you can get a linux based snmpd to bind the AP UP trap OID to a script which reads through the database for the AP mac address (after putting colons back in), finds the correct name and then talks to the controller using [language/curl/other] to reprovision the AP into the correct AP group.

I am not sure at what point part 2 becomes viable with your situation...

hth.

Thanks a lot that kind of script may help.

Thanks also to the other suggestions.