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How exacly does the procedure of Aruba Instant work?

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  • 1.  How exacly does the procedure of Aruba Instant work?

    Posted Jun 07, 2017 05:05 AM

    Hello,

     

    I will be working on future projects where Aruba Instant will come to hand. Ive been informing myself and in the end ive come up with an scenario which topology i cannot post now. Maybe i will later.

     

    I am trying to understand the prozess of how in the end everything is working step by step. This is my theory of how it would work:

    1. I connect the first IAP 225. Through the Management VLAN (20) it makes contact to the pre-configured DHCP Server and gets an IP from the defined DHCP Scope.

    2. After 5 minutes the IAP 225 becomes the Virtual Controller. (Later on when i power up the other IAP 225/205 they will become the slaves.)

    3. After/parallel/before? the Master sends another DHCP Request to the AirWave server with an Option 60 string. The DHCP Server sends an answer with Option 43 and the parameters/string "(organization),amp-ip-address,password". What happens now?

    4. The Master gets a virtual IP from the DHCP Server, or from AirWave? And is the IP static? (After that the VC broadcasts its MAC-Adress and VC-IP-Address.)

    5. By now the Master gets its template from AirWave per HTTPS. The slaves inherit the template from the Master.

     

    That is everything that i can think of at the moment.

    My questions are:

    - When the first 225 powers up, he send a DHCP request to the DHCP Server. Does he do that with the option 60 (aruba Instant), or just a "normal" one primary just to get an IP-Address from its intended DHCP Scope.

    - When exacly does the cluster get formed?

    - Is this right: IAP gets an IP and after 5 minutes it sends another DHCP request to provide the VC-IP.

    - In this process, does AirWave have another function then providing the Master/VC with its template?

     

    Thank you for you help and greetings from Germany



  • 2.  RE: How exacly does the procedure of Aruba Instant work?

    EMPLOYEE
    Posted Jun 07, 2017 05:41 AM

    - When it is new, the first IAP gets an ip address through DHCP from the untagged VLAN that it is on.  The IAP checks for DHCP option 60 of "ArubaInstantAP".  If it finds that, it looks for DHCP option 43 in the format of "<organizationstring,AirWaveIPaddress,sharedsecret>" and tries to autoprovision to Airwave.  If it does not find a DHCP option 60, it instead reaches out to device.arubanetworks.com (Aruba Activate), where it tried to cloud-provision itself.  

    - If there are instructions in Aruba Activate for Airwave for that IAP, it will send the ip address, organization string and shared secret of the Airwave Server for provisioning to the IAP.  The IAP will then provision itself to that Airwave Server.

    - If there are no cloud instructions in Aruba Activate, the Instant AP will boot up and send a broadcast to see if there is already a master IAP running.  If there is no master IAP running, it will boot it self up, make itself the master and load its existing configuration.  If the IAP is new, it will broadcast "Instant" and wait for someone to connect and configure it.  (newer IAPs will broadcast "setmeup <mac address>", instead).

     

    If you have an IAP, you can watch the discovery process by typing "show log provision" and "show activate status".

     

    Much more detailed information can be found in the Instant Validated Reference Design Guide here:  http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Validated-Reference-Design/Aruba-Instant-Validated-Reference-Design/ta-p/258782