Have a multi controller environment, master with 3 locals running v3.3.2.14 and trying to upgrade to v5.0.4.9. 500 APs are split over the 4 controllers,
Was trying to avoid Aruba's big bang approach to the upgrade, and was hoping to be able to control the upgrade by moving all APs from one of the controllers, upgrade it, then move them back, then repeat. I first attempted to move AP groups by changing their LMS address so APs would move to another controller, I then upgraded the controller they moved from, changed the LMS to move them back, but they seemed to just sit in limbo. I then attempted to use VRRP to failover the APs to the upgraded controller, but this dint work either, again, the APs just seemd to be in limbo.
Prior to upgrading a controller, I had used both above methods to simply move the APs between controllers, proving that the method should work, at least when all controllers where on same version of code. The problem seemed to be simply when one of the controllers was on v5, that I couldt get an AP to terminate. I tried both methods leaving the controller as local, and also breaking the pairing with the Master, neither of which were successful.
Im now trying to find out whether either of the above should actually work, although I know Aruba guidelines dont mention using either method, but I had been advised by our support company to use the vrrp approach, and change the role of the controller being upgraded to Master.
The only way we could actually get this to work would be to either reprovision all APs and use the upgraded controller's IP as the master IP address, or to change aruba-master dns entry to point to the new controller and hope that we didnt lose power to any other AP's we werent upgrading! However, both of these mehtods seem rather crude.
It may be that we simply end up doing the big bang approach, I was just curious to know whether either of the above should actually work.