Wireless Access

Hi all

We are looking at an upgrade from version 6 to version 8 for a wireless site.

2 x 7240XM controllers with approx 1200 Access Points.

Based on some investigation we are NOT going to use the migration tool and instead will build a new standalone controlller on version 8.

We will then migrate all the old version 6 Access Points to version 8.

My question is if it is possible to use the "AP Preload image" feature when moving from version 6.

Is it possible when upgrading from/to a major release ?

I am hoping that using this service will limit the time required during the upgrade.

You cannot.  You have to do a factory reset on a controller to upgrade from 6.x to 8.x, anyways.

Great, thanks for getting back so quick. Thought as much ! Any other advice on upgrades to version 8 for a larg'ish site such as this Colin ? I have read the tech note, but looking for real world examples ! How long you think it woudl take to upgrade 1200 APs ?

Ideally you would build a parallel infrastructure in your lab, with replacement controllers.  After you test your new configuration and functionality with access points with live traffic in a pilot , you would then migrate those access points to the new controllers.

Yes, we have built this parallel network and tested it, all good there! My concern is around the time it is going to take to migrate all 1200 Access Points. 1min per Access Point is my own experience, but you are still looking at a 24 hour migration then ! I am just looking at ways to streamline this timeline.

If you have a parallel system, for testing, you can statically point a few access points to the ip address of any controller in the new cluster using AP provisioning.  When they come up and are functional on the new system will give you an idea of how long it will take to migrate a few access points.  Those access points have to negotiate new cpsec certificates with the new system so like 8 to 12 minutes per access point.  This happens concurrently, so the time it would take is specific to each environment, based on the uplink you have to controllers and how busy they are when they convert.  It is also possible that you might have not duplicated all of your AP-groups or configuration, causing many of your access points to come up, and that will consume time troubleshooting.

Long story short, you should be staging mini migrations and mini production runs with small communities so that you can get a sense of everything that you would expect before you try to migrate 1200 access points.  There could be a number of gotchas like missed parameters, or unexpected behavior that will make things uncomfortable if you don't do a pilot, first.

Good advice there, thanks appreciate it !

We use DNS for AP's to discover the Controllers currently. One entry for the entire site. I know if we use DHCP Option 43 we can migrate certain VLANs to the new Parallel Version 8 environment. But is there another more effecient way to control this migration. You mention "statically point a few access points to the ip address of any controller in the new cluster using AP provisioning" ?? Is that a manual configuration on the AP ?

To change the name or ap-group of an access point, you go through the provisioning dialog.  There is an option to statically point an access point to the ip address of a controller.  You would set that ip address of the VRRP of the new cluster. You can provision quite a few access points this way, as long as the model numbers match.

When you want to go through the real migration, you would change the DNS a-record and just reboot.

Excellent ! thanks so much !

To avoid the surge of hundreds AP rushing to new AOS8 controller at the same time, we moved one AP-group at a time by changing AOS6 AP system profile LMS-IP to AOS8 vrrp cluster IP address. You must have different AP system profile for each AP-group and identical AP-group at AOS8.

After all AP-groups moved, then we changed the DNS.

Hi

I have tested the following in my lab.

1. MC7030 running 6.5.4.14

2. Upgraded the Partition 1 (not in use) to 8.5.0.6

3. Use the AP preload feature to preload 8.5.0.6 to AP connected to MC7030 still on 6.5.4.14

4. After Preload was completed I disconnected the AP and booted it with console connected :

apboot> osinfo
Partition 0:
image type: 0
machine type: 48
size: 10627500
version: 8.5.0.6
build string: ArubaOS version 8.5.0.6 for 30x (p4build@pr-hpn-build09) (gcc version 4.6.3) #74058 SMP Fri Jan 24 02:34:58 UTC 2020
flags:
oem: aruba

So If I understood your question correctly it could work.

Cheers