Prior to AOS 8.6, if the access point was not an IAP or a member of the newer UAP lineup, it was forever destined to be tied to a controller as either a CAP (campus AP) or a RAP (remote AP). However, this is no longer the case.
Keep in mind that in order to do this you’ll need a valid support subscription and a controller in order to download the code you need, but the process is relatively straight forward.
Here are the steps to convert an AP (that is not a UAP) to an IAP.
- Obtain the Aruba InstantOS code version for the AP you want to convert
- Copy the code over to a FTP or TFTP server, or to the flash of the MD that the AP is connected
- Open the CLI to your controller (who uses a GUI anyway…) and enter the following commands:
- (aruba9004-lab) #ap convert add ap-name <ap name>
- (aruba9004-lab) #ap convert active specific-aps server tftp <server address A.B.C.D> <code filename>
- Once you enter this, the AP(s) will begin the conversion process and prompt you with a warning:
- WARNING: This command will permanently write a country code on the selected APs if they currently don’t have one. Once the country code is written, it cannot be modified. Do you want to proceed with the operation? [y/n]:
Also important to note is that the above command has several permutations to allow you to convert a number of ways. You can even build a list of APs to convert ahead of time, making it easier later to come back and kick off the process.
The following are some of the differences in the command structure:
- specific-aps can be replaced with all-aps on the controller
- server can be replaced with activate (convert CAP from activate) or local-flash (convert CAP from MD local flash)
- tftp can be replaced with ftp, http, https, or scp to use different file transfer methods
In order to track the status of the conversion process, here are some useful commands:
- show ap convert-status-summary
- show ap convert-status-list
Another important thing to note is that the AP conversion process will tie the converted AP to whatever region the controller is assigned for regulatory purposes. Just b/c you can convert and AP doesn’t mean that you can use a US controller to create a bunch of rest of world (RW) IAPs.
Hope that this helps you out if you need some extra IAP but only have APs laying around.
-Scott