Wireless Access

This question was raised to our SE as well but we haven't had an answer yet for some time so I'm seeing if there is any knowledge within the community. 

Aruba OS 8 supports multiversion support but what I understood only 2 major versions apart. I.e. MM on 8.4 can support MD on 8.2 code but 8.5 cannot support 8.2 code. 

Aruba OS 8 supports LSM of which the UCM component is one:

https://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/ArubaOS_81_Web_Help/Content/ArubaFrameStyles/Voice_Video/Lync_ALG.htm

The need we have today is Zoom UCC integration - we were told this would not be an LSM UCM but would be available in AOS 8.6.

Last month 8.3 is has just become CR release. 

8.4 has been released January this year to support 11ax for new product and will have short life span

8.5 has been released last month

8.6 is due later this year around Q3 what I am told. 

Questions:

- Is the 2 version MultiVersion not somewhat limited if Aruba is releasing 3 major versions a year ? Are there plans to support further down - i.e. 8.6 supporting 8.3 and/or below ? 

- Does the requirement to upgrade to 8.6 for Zoom UCC support not break the LSM philosophy ? 

The two steps will still be a limit. So to run 8.6, the lowest version then will be 8.4. 8.4 was a weird interim release and will be shunted to 8.5 in short order.

LSM, as a philosophy, was more about the ability to patch in for specific features as needed, but the reaility is the interdependencies that exist for features (UCC depends on not just UCC, but AppRF, ClientMatch, AirMatch, etc) means that adding in features for new classifications is far larger than a single LSM. As such, most new feature support will still be in major code revs to ensure interoperability amongst all the services.

Thanks - let's hope  8.4 is a bit of a one off in this case and that the release cycle slows down a bit. 

One a positive note - I did 2 live upgrades today (8.3.0.5->8.3.0.6 and 8.3.0.6->8.3.0.7) on our production network with about 7 clients connected (6 mine) and impact was very low. 

All clients were running Zoom calls (including 1 client shareing YT A/V which kept running throughout the upgrades to the other clients). RDP sessions (which are known to sensitive) stayed up. SSH session stayed up. W10 laptops lost about 7-10 pings, MacBooks about 30 pings per upgrade. Impressive and happy with the results

I think we just need to build up confidence to kick this off in a sort of semi-automated fashion...

This is the first reference i've seen to a 'two version' difference, but I have had a couple support cases open for a few weeks now even on MM 8.5.0.0 and MD 8.3.0.7. Centralized AirGroup seems to be broken, getting no UCC visibility, and there are some MM dashboard UI sync issues (MD dashboard is fine). The support engineer was telling me the multi version support might only work within a major version, i.e. 8.3.x.x to 8.3.y.y. Maybe these are just 8.5 MM issues that 'should' work but don't. I wanted to run 8.5 on a test controller for the new AP support and VRRP customization, but keep the production controllers on 8.3.0.7 for stability. So not a great experience with multi version so far. 

The support engineer was telling me the multi version support might only work within a major version, i.e. 8.3.x.x to 8.3.y.y.

That would be quite concerning if that was the case - how would one move between versions in that case? We discussed an upgrade path with MM on 8.5 and MD on 8.3 with our SE and that was considered to a normal upgrade path. 

I think 8.5.0.0 is just very fresh and I have been burned running early releases out of new trains, so expect your issues to be bugs likely. 

If the TAC engineer is not sure and starts to use words like "might/maybe" etc. ask him to get a more senior person involved or asked your SE to raise the level of engineer on your case. 

Just confirmed with PLM that MM will support up to a 2 major code rev difference between MMs and MCs (aka 8.4 MM down to as low as 8.2 MCs, 8.5MM down to as low as 8.3MCs, etc).