If we stay in the 6.5 world for a moment .. what are my realistic options?
We don't have Airwave, so I guess Master/Master-Backup might be an option. But then I cannot have AP's terminating on the Master-Backup controller and failover times would be slow. And to add to that, I wanted to use the Fast Failover since we are on 6.5 release - hence, why I thought Master/Local would be best. Isn't that almost a no-brainer?
Aruba has too many options in my opinion - and I find it confusing. I still have my 6.3 training guide where they mention all these potential scenarios, most of which I find fanciful. e.g. having a licensing server (and a backup licensing server). Or a layer of licensing controllers, and a layer of master controllers - all of that stuff, even before I start terminating any APs on the Local controllers. That's a nice to have and I am sure some customers have it. But in the SMB we cannot sell such luxury. SMB customers want redundancy for sure. A two controller setup is probably quite common and there should be a best practice for this. Or at least a table that shows the deployment options and their pros and cons. Without all the best and whistles ... just a tried and tested solution would be nice.
I am open to be inspired.