Wireless Access

We have three 7005 controllers operating a Master Local topology with Centralized licensing enable

Controller 1(Master) 24 Aruba AP licenses

Controller 2(Local) 10 Aruba AP licenses

      10 PEF Licenses

Controller 3(Local) No license

34 Aruba 350 APs

8 Aruba 205 APs

The AP joins the master successfully and initially only a few are able to obtain licenses from the pool, out of a total of 34-aggregated licenses, initially, 10 APs get a license and start broadcasting while the rest result in a boot loop with "IL" flag. After re-provisioning some of the APs, they were able to obtain licenses from the pool but when we have a restart of the controller and APs the problem persists.

We have moved the master controller from Controller 3 to controller 1 which has more licenses (24) but we still have the same challenge, only a few APs (10) or less obtain a license from the pool until we push or re-provision  the AP which isn’t sustainable

'#show ap database' command reveals that most of the APs don't stay longer than 10 minutes before the restart and they end up with the "IL" flag.

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@lynad wrote:

We have three 7005 controllers operating a Master Local topology with Centralized licensing enable

Controller 1(Master) 24 Aruba AP licenses

Controller 2(Local) 10 Aruba AP licenses

      10 PEF Licenses

 

Controller 3(Local) No license

 

34 Aruba 350 APs

8 Aruba 205 APs

 

The AP joins the master successfully and initially only a few are able to obtain licenses from the pool, out of a total of 34-aggregated licenses, initially, 10 APs get a license and start broadcasting while the rest result in a boot loop with "IL" flag. After re-provisioning some of the APs, they were able to obtain licenses from the pool but when we have a restart of the controller and APs the problem persists.

 

We have moved the master controller from Controller 3 to controller 1 which has more licenses (24) but we still have the same challenge, only a few APs (10) or less obtain a license from the pool until we push or re-provision  the AP which isn’t sustainable

'#show ap database' command reveals that most of the APs don't stay longer than 10 minutes before the restart and they end up with the "IL" flag.

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Just to confirm ... you have an aggregate of 34 AP licenses and 10 PEF licenses?

Based on that, your AP capacity is 10 (the lowest number of AP licenses). If you need more than 10 APs, the number of PEF licenses needs to be increased, or the APs using PEF need to be relocated to a standalone controller that is not part of the master/local group.

Thanks for your response, i suspected that might be the reason as well. I attached a screenshot of "show license server-table" below, you would notice that i have 10 PEFNG licenses yet, the master is giving out more than twenty, and this remains stable until i restart the controller, and most times i have more than 20 APs getting licenses while the rest are stuck in a bootloop. Also, can i just delete the PEF license on one of the controllers and leave just the AP license? Would that help? Thanks

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@lynad wrote:

Thanks for your response, i suspected that might be the reason as well. I attached a screenshot of "show license server-table" below, you would notice that i have 10 PEFNG licenses yet, the master is giving out more than twenty, and this remains stable until i restart the controller, and most times i have more than 20 APs getting licenses while the rest are stuck in a bootloop. Also, can i just delete the PEF license on one of the controllers and leave just the AP license? Would that help? Thanks

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So long as only the default user roles are used and unmodified, then you should be okay to remove the 10 PEFNG licenses in order to have availability of all the AP licenses. The PEF functionality may have been used for captive portal roles, or custom roles for role based access, so definitely check first.

I'm not sure if this is a problem but i added 24 AP licenses to the master controller which is a 7005 mobility controller with a limit of 16 APs.

I'm sure it would donate the whole 24 licenses to the pool but would it cause any problem?

Also refer to the attachment, why are the APs consuming more PEF licenses than what is available which is 10

Thank you

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@lynad wrote:

I'm not sure if this is a problem but i added 24 AP licenses to the master controller which is a 7005 mobility controller with a limit of 16 APs.

I'm sure it would donate the whole 24 licenses to the pool but would it cause any problem?

Also refer to the attachment, why are the APs consuming more PEF licenses than what is available which is 10

 

Thank you

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Would need the license output from each of the five controllers to say for sure, but it appears to me that some number of PEF licenses are installed directly on the local controller(s), vs what's installed on the license server.

Thank you for your help, i removed the PEF and RF License, all APs are broadcasting and UP now.