Wireless Access

Hello,

It seems this request is a common one over the years but is there a method of bulk provisioning new Access Points either by CSV or the CLI? We are in the process of a mass rollout (1000 Access Points) and the process is currently as such.

1. Unbox Access Point

2. Connect to Network in Lab.

3. Provision on Master Controller Web Interface

4. Pass to installers for installation.

This is a long and repetitive process. Is there a way to do this via CSV or CLI where you can give the MAC Address, the AP Group the AP should belong to, and what name the AP should have, so that it just comes up ready to go when its installed? We have control plane swicthed off during the rollout phase so we do not need to whitelist them.

Thanks.

Actually the best way to do this is through the whitelist with control plane security ON, because whatever you put into the whitelist (name, ap-group) will automatically name the access point and put it into an ap-group.  There is a process, however:

1. Send an englarged copy of the floor plan with physical AP locations to the team mounting access points (names are not important for now) along with APs that are still in the box (or you can have a team take them out of the box, your choice.)
2. Have the crew that mounts the APs tear off the AP sticker and place it onto the paper floor plan where they actually put the access point. (they can put any access point anywhere, really).

3. Have the mounting crew give the englarged diagram back to the WLAN engineering team.
4. The engineering team can then use a barcode scanner to scan the barcodes add the AP mac address/ to the whitelist and name them at the same time.
5. When the access points come up, they will have the correct name and ap-group, based on the cpsec whitelist.

6.  If you are using Airwave, that will carry over and you can also place them on the RF plan floor map.

*The big issue with having a crew mount access points is that frequently the access points get lost and mixed up and the wrong access points are mounted in the wrong place, and your floor plan/names are wrong. If you allow the crew to instead say where they placed the access point by simply putting the AP sticker on a diagram, this is much more accurate. The administrator can name the access points in the whitelist by scanning the sticker on the map and naming it AFTER they are mounted.

You can of course enter the names before they are mounted, but you are counting on the mounting crew to be perfect...

You can add Campus ap whitelist entries to the cpsec database using the commandline: https://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/ArubaOS_6_5_4_X_Web_Help/Web_Help_Index.htm#ArubaFrameStyles/1CommandList/whitelistdb.htm?Highlight=whitelist or the GUI https://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/ArubaOS_6_5_4_X_Web_Help/Web_Help_Index.htm#ArubaFrameStyles/Control_Plane/Whitelists_on_Campus_and_Remote_APs.htm?Highlight=whitelist

Thanks for this but unfortunately as we are replacing exisiting APs (Different Vendor) the Access Points really need to be provisioned before they are installed in order to minimise downtime

Well, you would use a barcode scanner to enter the ap mac address, name and ap-group into the cpsec whitelist ahead of time.  Access points will be named and grouped when they come up.

I suppose so but I can't see that saving me much time as it is still a manual process for each individual Access Point. Surprises me that there isn't some sort of wizard that allows for this type of thing as its such a regular question on these forums.

Is there a place where a list of all of your access point mac addresses, names and ap-groups exist?  Even if it did, the access point names and ap-groups would have to be edited in that list manually, anyways, right?

If your company signed up for Aruba Activate (activate.arubanetworks.com), all the assets you purchased should be there and there should be a whitelist cli button that would generate the commands to add them to the RAP whitelist.  You would have to edit the commands to add those devices to the CPSEC whitelist, instead.  http://community.arubanetworks.com/aruba/attachments/aruba/SoftwareUserReferenceGuides/83/1/Aruba_Activate_User_Guide.pdf  

Maybe others will have better ideas for you.

Well no, but in my opinion it is far easier to create this info in an Excel document with a barcode scanner than it is on the controller GUI, just because of the way Excel deals with successive numbers that you would use for a naming scheme etc. As I say, just my opinion. 

You currently have the option of doing it in the GUI or in the commandline.  You can create the commands themselves in excel and paste them into the commandline.

This is the format:

whitelist-db cpsec add mac-address 00:0B:86:F6:FA:9A ap-group "default" ap-name "name of ap"

You can simply create an excel spreadsheet with all those parameters except for the mac address, ap-name and group and start scanning.  Copy and paste them into the commandline of the controller when you are done.

Again, you would need to have CPSEC (control plane security) on for this to work.

non cpsec version

a) put mac address,ap-name,ap-group in some csv text file

b) setup a linux vm with syslog, point controller syslog to it, upload the csv file from step a) above

c) create a shell script that will run when the log message of a new AP coming up is seen (e.g. wrangle rsyslogd/syslog-ng to exec a script when a certain log pattern is seen)

d) have said script extract the mac address from the syslog message, reference the csv file, and then send CLI commands to the controller to reprovision the AP with ap-name and ap-group

there are multiple ways of solving d)  (expect, python, injecting through the webUI cgi interface etc. etc.), but before you get to that stage, you need to be sure you would be able to do b) thorugh c)