Network Management

Hi All,

I'm currently deploying a customer's AMP-8.0.9.2, with IAPs on v6.4.2.6-4.1.1.10_51810.

We're also using the Instant-GUI-Config in the groups.

In this scenario, we also have a group for each country and physical site (building). This is for flexibility in terms of SSIDs being available or not etc. and allows for global regs etc.

This however presents a challenge in that it doesn't appear to be possible to change a specific configuration element across ALL groups at the same time.

I.e. we're using Instant-GUI, so no templates apply as such (to my knowledge). Therefore, say we needed to change the PSK on a SSID globally in one job? I can't see a way to do that, without going into each group in turn, changing the SSID PSK one site at a time.

Is there an easier way?

Nope. Airwave Group is config containers which doesn't share anything between them. There is no global config elements. You can copy all of the config from one Group to another, but not single elements.

I found a single group with VC overrides to work best in my scenarios..

I thought that was the case. Thanks for confirming what I suspected.

The problem with the VC contexts in one group, is that it's far too easy for a "helpdesk" person to make a mistake and accidently delete/change configs estate wide (because they forgot to click the VC).

Wouldn't it be great if we could have nested groups (groups in groups)?!?! In there, the menu structure would make it far more difficult to make a mistake!

Yea I agree that it is a bit vulnerable.. The solution I've had is just to create a dummy-group, and do a copy of the settings to that dummy-group. If something happens we just reverse the copy and things are back. The local overrides will still be unaffected.

That said... It's fairly annoying how vulnerable the system is when you are managing the config on Airwave. I've had two customers mess things up now by just doing the "right" thing. They had IAP105 systems and when buying more AP's now they ofc got IAP-205's. So they did what they always do - plug it in to a vlan with the other existing IAP's. Mixed environment with different OS versions - what happens?

Oh yea - the IAP-205 doesn't think there is a suitable master available so it takes the master-role, connects to Airwave (due to DHCP-options) and replaces the VC-config with it's blank config. ARGH!

There's a certain irony in there isn't there?

I.e. Look how it's so easy. So easy you're very likely to break it, oh look you just broke it...

Before anybody says it, yes there's things that COULD be done in these scenarios, but customer's don't behave that way as we all know!

jsolb - would be interested to hear any opinion you have on another post of mine?

http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Unified-Wired-Wireless-Access/Airwave-Automatic-Authorization-amp-quot-Organization-quot/m-p/254064

Thanks.

@jsolb Hi!

Just a followup question on the scenario you experienced with the IAP205 connecting to IAP105s and Airwave. Did it just wipe the local clusters configuration or did it acctually wipe the Airwave groups configuration, affecting other clusters aswell?

This sounds like a scenario that shouldn´t happen because there´s already a set golden config in that group and a new fresh cluster joining that group should probably just try to pull that config. No?

Cheers,

Chris 

Just thought I'd do a final post in terms of my original observation...

Sounds like Airwave development got some feeback similar to mine from somebody significant.

There's a new feature in 8.0.10. When you click a VC in a group, you get a little pop-up warning you you're working on a VC specific setup. Nice.