Wireless Access

Hi:

I'm wanting to upgrade my controllers from 6.3 to 6.4, and I'm pondering the procedure.

Along with this move, I'm retiring my 3400 controllers. Currently, all access points are living on the 3400's. I have two 7210's which have been added to the cluster. One 7210 is the current master and uses centralized licensing. I've setup the other 7210 as a local controller, and I've tested a few APs on it, so I know I've got my VLANs, etc. setup correctly.

To get to 6.4 I'm thinking that I should:

* Move all access points to the 7210 master via the ap-system-profile

* Disconnect the 3400's

* Upgrade secondary partitions on both 7210 contollers

* Reboot both 7210 controllers

* Redistribute access points on the two 7210's

I'm guessing the above will work, but is there a more gentle way, such that I can upgrade one controller and move access points to it in batches for testing? That way I wouldn't have to take everything down at once.

Thanks,

Tony

HI,

You can also do the following,

1. Move all the APs from 3400 to Local-7210 if you have enough licenses.

2. Upgrade Master-7210 and reload it. you enable centralised Image management so that Local-7210 will upgraded accordingly.

3. Distribute APs accordingly.

4. If you think everything going smoothly than you move out 3400 controller.

Please feel free for any further query on this.

Hello Venu:

Thank you for the reply.

I am not familiar with Centralized Image Management.

Is this something I have to enable? If so, can you tell me where to enable it?

Thank you.

HI,

Yes. we have to enable it on the master as  shown in the snap shot. BTW even you can use Image preload option for APs to reduce the downtime.

you can try and please feel free if any further help needed on this.

For ref :

Hello Venu:

Thank you for your reply.

I also did not know about ap image preload, so that will come in handy.

If all the APs are on the local controller, and I then ugrade my master to 6.4, then I enable ap image preload, what next?

Once "show ap image-preload-status" shows that all the APs have preloaded 6.4, do I have to reboot the AP's for the new image to take effect? 

Thank you.

Hi,

In general what happens is, when you upgrade your controller, APs will have to reboot two times,When Controller reboots after image upgradation AP also reboot along with controller, once controller boot up with new Image controller will push the new image to the AP then again AP will reboot.

To avoid two time rebooting, Aruba came out with AP Image Preloaded option, it will allow the controller to push the new Image to all APs then it will get upgraded and Controller and all the APs will reboot once.

Hope got some more clarity,

 please feel free for any further query on this.

Hi Venu:

Thank you again for this excellent information.

I want to avoid rebooting all APs at once.

Would it be possible to:

Load 6.4 image on 7210 Local

Preload new image on APs

Move APs to 7210 Local controller one at a time

Upgrade 7210 Master to 6.4 and redistribute APs

If that won't work, is there another way to avoid rebooting all APs at the same time?

Thank you,

Tony

HI,

Generally, we have to upgrade the Master first by enabling AP image preload option along with centralised Image management. 

Other wise you can achieve this with out using Centralised image management. but you can not have AP Image preload.

Option 1 :

1. Terminate all the APs on Master and upgrade Local and reboot.

2. Move some of the APs to Local

3. Upgrade Master with AP image reload option and reload the master

4. Now distribute APs accordingly.

Option 2 :( Using 3400 Controller as a standby Controller)

1. Terminate All APs on 3400 Controller

2. Upgrade Master and enable Centralised Image management

3. Terminate some of the APs on Local ( 7210 ) and let them upgrade and reload.

4. Terminate rest of the APs to the Master as per your need.

Hope got some more clarity on this, please feel free for any further help on this.

HI Venu:

Thanks again for your reply.

So from what you are saying, it appears that it would be OK to update the Local, and move APs to the Local, and then lastly update the Master?

I realize that the APs would boot twice when moved to the Local, but at least I could move a few at a time.

Thanks,

Tony

Yes. that is the idea.

Why don't you ask for downtime and get it done :)

Hi Venu:

I've upgraded my Local controller to 6.4, and moved a few APs to it for testing.

However, they APs have not come up properly.

When I issue a "show ap database" the status of the APs alternates between "inactive" and "down".

This has been going on for quite some time now.

Could there be something I'm missing?

Thank you.

HI,

Check the license and other L2 and L3 ( VLAN, DHCP,ROuting and Local batabase) on the local controller.

On the local controller can you see Traffic from APs use "show datapath session" and look for PAPI and GRE traffic ( UDP 8211 and 47 traffic ).

Check AP debug logs to know the reason.

1. enable the required log : logging level debugging ap-debug <AP name>

2. show log ap-debug all

This will help you to diagnose the issue. please feel free if the issue is not resolved.

Update: In the end, I wasn't able to find a way to upgrade the system one AP at a time.

I upgraded all the controllers and rebooted. Within a few minutes, everything was up and running on 6.4.

Good Luck!

Tony