Question- 1. Do mesh portal and points with no active VAP use any licenses?
2. How can we make Mesh APs not use any licenses from the controller?
Environment- The commands in this article were tested on Aruba OS 6.4.2.4
Answer- Aruba controller has 3 basic license types pertaining to the APs:
1. AP license
2. PEF-NG license
3. RF protect license
A. A controller can only ship with inbuilt AP license. It will never have inbuilt RF-protect / PEF-NG license.
B. All licenses must be equal in number for APs to come up. If licenses are unequal in number, then the license which is least in number will decide the number of APs which can come up on the controller.
C. A mesh AP (point or a portal) without an active VAP profile to its AP group will not use any licenses.
D. Below we have a controller with mesh point and portal terminating on it:
E. One AP is a mesh point, other is a portal:
F. We see that there is no VAP profile in the AP-group:
G. We see that there are two licenses on the controller but none are being used:
H. For confirmation, we will map a VAP profile to the AP-group:
I. Now we see that licenses are being used:
AnswerLT- 1. A mesh AP (point or a portal) without a active VAP to its AP group will not use any licenses.
2. If mesh link is being used to bridge the Ethernet, we can remove the VAP profile form the AP-group to save the licenses.