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Aruba Central and WIfi Access Points (without on prem controllers)

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  • 1.  Aruba Central and WIfi Access Points (without on prem controllers)

    Posted 11 days ago

    Hello All,

    Looking at possibly adding new Aruba AP's but having them connect directly to Aruba Central.

    We currently have on prem controllers and want to find out what are the drawbacks of configuring it just for Aruba Central to be managed in the cloud?

    Anyone else doing this without on prem controllers?

    What features and options would not be available if we do AP direct to Aruba Central?

    Any Performance , troubleshooting, upgrade issues to look out for?

    Thanks



  • 2.  RE: Aruba Central and WIfi Access Points (without on prem controllers)

    MVP GURU
    Posted 11 days ago

    You lose the capability of doing things like tunneled SSIDs, and Micro-Branch/RAP type of deployments. Aruba AOSv10  Controllerless just bridges the traffic locally on the switchport. You can tag clients into different VLANs in the role configuration to maintain separation. Your switching architecture may need some work because you would have to bring the user VLANs to each AP. AOS10 is very scalable and can be pulled off without any controllers/gateways.



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    Dustin Burns

    Lead Mobility Engineer @Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

    ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022-2023
    If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos
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  • 3.  RE: Aruba Central and WIfi Access Points (without on prem controllers)

    EMPLOYEE
    Posted 11 days ago

    Here is the Architectural Overview AOS-10 



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    If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos.
    Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of HPE or Aruba.
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  • 4.  RE: Aruba Central and WIfi Access Points (without on prem controllers)

    Posted 10 days ago

    Hi.

    You get some features you loose some features. The biggest change is licensing vs subscription. On the on-prem controller you have permanent licenses on Central you only have subscriptions. You will be able to manage AOS10 only when valid subscription is applied for device. In AOS10 many functions are moved from controller/AP to the cloud and are available when APs have connection to the Central.

    Scalability and flexibility of AOS10 is excellent. On the other hand controller based configuration provide more control over low level functions versus AOS10 more let say user friendly approach. 

    As Dustin already pointed out, without gateway (controller) you will lose tunnel and mixed mode and you need to provide all required vlans to each AP. If you use RADIUS authentication, you will need to register all APs with RADIUS server instead of registering only GW. As you already have controllers,  you can migrate them into GWs and have  tunnel and RADIUS proxy features back. 

    Other limitation/recommendation is the number of APs and client. If you approach 500 APs, then go with gateways.

    There are many customers using only APs on smaller deployments up to several hundreds of APs without gateways and it's working just fine. 

    Best, Gorazd 

     



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    Gorazd Kikelj
    MVP Guru 2024
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    Original Message