Cloud Managed Networks

Hi all,

I am currently evaluating Aruba Central as part of a hardware refresh we are performing on our switching environment. I am interested in having a single portal where I can view switch information and in particular firmware revisions, updates available etc. This is the key thing I'm interested in, which Aruba Central seems to do fine. The additional stuff such as templates and analytics etc are a great benefit but not critical to my needs. So far so good, here comes the 'but'  

Is there any way to have switches in Aruba Central such that they can still be managed locally? If it means disabling cloud management and having just firmware info etc I am fine with that, but I really do not want to not be able to manage devices locally. One reason would be if we lost connection to the cloud/internet and we had to implement emergency route changes on the switches to resolve. My team here are all skilled in command line configuration.

Does anyone have any insight into this or any thoughts? All comments welcome!

Thanks

Hi neilb376,

if you manage your switches through central, then there is no way to add another different management system like AirWave. But you can always manage those switches through CLI. 

As long as the switch is connected to Central, the config from Central will override local changes. So you should make sure that your primary change process will be through central. 

In the case of a disconnect from Central, you can manage those switches through CLI and do all the changes needed. But you should make sure, that you also do the changes in Central because whatever happened, the switch will somehow reconnect to central and get a new update from there. And it might happen, that your changes are then overridden. 

BR

Florian

Thanks for the reply, however my testing on a switch has shown that once it is connected to Aruba Central, most of the command line commands do not work. It is limiting what I can change locally.

Is there any way to disable config management from Aruba Central and just use it for analysis, inventory and firmware?

Thanks,

Hi neilb376,

this is true, if you connect to a switch, managed by aruba central will hide most of the config items but with 

(config)# aruba-central support-mode enable

you can enable all config items.  

To my knowledge, firmware + monitoring only is not possible. But I wonder, what will happen if you put a switch into a template group in central, without having a template. this will at least prevent central from pushing a config onto the switch.