Wireless Access

Here's a grumpy post..... I understand that SNMP location has disappeared from Airwave with AOS8. What I'm not sure why this has happened. A few references to "nobody really uses it" amongst the various people asking where it's gone.

 

In the absence of this functionality, is there a recommended way for handling the AP location information that we've had for years in Airwave?

 

I can imagine using a notes field, much as that's a huge pain... Is there a nice way to copy the existing information into a different field in the Airwave database?

 

I just don't understand the decision behind this, so maybe an explainer would be helpful. Right now I can have to look up location information somewhere else, which makes no sense of Airwave as a NMS.

I want to say that I am not responsible for any decisions with regards to the direction of the product.

 

In my understanding the only way to get the snmp  syslocation information field for an AP, Airwave would have to login to the controller and run the "show ap provisoning ap-name" command for each AP because that parameter is not populated in SNMP.  There is also not a way to provision that information to the AP using the GUI in 8.x.  My advice to customers is to pick an AP naming convention that would make sense to the people who have to work with them and stick to it.  I have encountered very few customers in AOS 6.x who even used it, really.

 

I get what you're saying... however we have over 2500 APs already in service and labelled with their AP name... and I won't be relabelling them.

 

If we were starting from scratch then maybe, yes, having an AP name that includes spaces codes for accurate location would make sense, however we haven't done that.... and I'm not relabelling 2500 APs.

 

I suppose I could append the location information onto the name when reprovisioning the APs to AOS8, but that data would need to be normalised and frankly it feels like a horrible kludge when what we've done for years, using the SNMP syslocation works just fine, and works for pretty much every vendor.

 

I'm genuinely baffled by this... It feels like a decision taken by someone who's never actually run a network. 

 

In the move from 6.5 to 8.4, that SNMP syslocation would the thing that causes us a major management headache is both a surprise and a disappointment.

 

It would be interesting to actually hear from others who are facing this.

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@cjoseph wrote:
In my understanding the only way to get the snmp  syslocation information field for an AP, Airwave would have to login to the controller and run the "show ap provisoning ap-name" command for each AP because that parameter is not populated in SNMP.

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Why not populated in SNMP? Along with sysName, sysLocation is one of the most basic of SNMP OIDs. I just looked it up: supported in MIB-II since 1991 (RFC 1213)

 

To answer @cjoesph's question: I do not currently use sysLocation inside of Airwave but I definitely do poll it from other monitoring platforms and do expect sysLocation to be available on all network equipment that lists SNMP as a feature.

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@vf556 wrote:

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@cjoseph wrote:
In my understanding the only way to get the snmp  syslocation information field for an AP, Airwave would have to login to the controller and run the "show ap provisoning ap-name" command for each AP because that parameter is not populated in SNMP.

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Why not populated in SNMP? Along with sysName, sysLocation is one of the most basic of SNMP OIDs. I just looked it up: supported in MIB-II since 1991 (RFC 1213)

 

To answer @cjoesph's question: I do not currently use sysLocation inside of Airwave but I definitely do poll it from other monitoring platforms and do expect sysLocation to be available on all network equipment that lists SNMP as a feature.

 

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Looking it up is not the same thing as using it. --  I think I will make that my tagline.

 

The AP syslocation was available and needed back in ArubaOS 3.x) when admins could only name an AP with a building.floor.location number (x.y.z), so admins could not be very descriptive.  There was not much AP density at that time so people didn't have many APs and it wasn't an issue.  Since ArubaOS 5.x (2010) admins could give access points a very long name, so in one parameter you could indicate very specific information about the AP, its location and even its function, if you wanted.  Very few people used the syslocation as a result.  In ArubaOS 8.x there is no ability to provision it.

 

If you are using ArubaOS 6.x I believe you could still poll it using the wlanAPSysLocation object.

 

 

If we're the only people in the world to be using this... then, there's still no reasonable case made for removing it. Maybe this was taking some table over a memory limit, perhaps there's a great reason for this to have been ditched... Maybe maybe... but a response of "You don't need to do it this way any more" is all well and good.... but we have done it that way. 

 

As I've explained, if this were a greenfield site then it wouldn't matter, but it isn't... and it does.

 

It is possible to provision this information within AOS8, just on the CLI. It's also preserved in the boot parameters of the AP when migrating from 6.5 to 8.4.

 

Now if we're going to start a conversation about whether not having something implemented on the GUI means it's of no value.... that's going to get interesting.

 

I don't disagree with anything that you are saying.

If a feature is not being used it does add to bloat and complexity and it increases cycles used to debug, fix and add features. That is the rationale for removing unused constructs.

Since it seems you are moving from AOS 6.x to 8, that is definitely your opportunity.

That's exactly where the problem lies. Location information I have varies from being a space code format for our campus e.g. V/N/103, to a descriptive "1st floor, behind reception". 

Starting from scratch, I'd name everything differently, but I can't lose the current AP name as they're physically labelled with that.

 

The best I can do is attempt to standardise the existing location information where possible into an AP name for the re-provisioning so VNAP12 in location V/N/103 would become VNAP12_103. 

 

I guess it will have to do... And APs with descriptive locations lose their location data entirely. 

You could use the new naming convention with a dash and the old naming convention.  AOS 8 at the MM allows  searches that populate on partial matches.

Hi,

 

to get this function for AOS8 back I raised a Feature Request. If you like you can vote or add something to it.

 

https://innovate.arubanetworks.com/ideas/NMS-I-1455

 

As of ArubaOS 8.5.0.3, AP SNMP syslocation is back in the GUI when provisioning an AP under advanced:

Superb news... Thanks for the update.

Matthew, keep in mind that it is still not in Airwave.

But the next good news is that the Feature request was sucessfull and it is planned to add it to Airwave in a next release.

 

May you please let me know how to get advanced provisioning page. I was unable to find the link. Our AOS version is 8.5.0.3.

Many thanks!

I added SNMP syslocation info in Controller (8.5.0.3), but the location info is still not showing up in Airwave. 

Please advise.

Many thanks!

FYI, this is fixed in AirWave 8.2.11.0.