Wireless Access

I received a few 3500's to test in-house.  Although I consider myself a CLI guy given my Cisco background, I was excited about the possibility of a fully fleshed out web GUI for a switch, since the GUI for Aruba controllers is so good (for the most part).  I was disappointed to find that the GUI for the 3500 is very limited in functionality.  Key things missing were the ability to create voip interface profiles and configuring STP.   I haven't had any trouble figuring out the CLI commands, but having a fully functional GUI would be nice for those just starting out with the mobility switches.  I feel like Aruba had an opportunity to really differentiate their switches by offering a full GUI, since other vendors like Cisco have such a limited web GUI.

Any one know what the story is -- why Aruba chose to limit the GUI and if there are any plans increase the level of configuration that can be done through it?

I'm not sure what the reason is about the GUI, but you can manage most of the config in AirWave 7.7 which was released yesterday.

Thecompnerd,

We appreciate the feedback regarding the WebUI. When developing the Mobility Access Switches, we found a majority of customers were focused more on the ability to configure things using the CLI (given their technical background) than a WebUI. I have actually had several customers ask me how to turn if off since they'll never use it regardless of the capabilities!

As you noted the Mobility Controllers have a very strong WebUI but that is a result of many years of development and unfortunately not a lot of it could be leveraged for the Mobility Access Switch given the differences in feature set. All of that said, we do want to improve the WebUI in future releases. We have made some incremental improvements most recently with the release of AOS 7.2.2.0, for example adding a "Diagnostic" tab and adding some more features in the "Maintenance" tab.

Another feedback we received from our customers and partners was with respect to using Airwave to manage the Mobility Access Switches. Airwave 7.7.0 is a result of that feedback which as Tim noted was released earlier this week. Our engineers have spent a great deal of time adding a lot of new configuration options as well as some monitoring features. Here are a few screenshots.

Brand New Configuration Tab

New Dropdowns on Monitor Page

If you are an Airwave user, we'd love to hear your thoughts on some of these new enhancements.

Again, we appreciate the feedback regarding the WebUI, I will definitely let our development team know.

Best regards,

Madani

Thank you for the informative posts, guys!

From a holistic point of view, I just thought it was odd that the GUI for the switches did not have the same level of options as the controllers.  I expected to see the same level of configuration options across all GUIs on all products.  In my opinion, having the GUI is great when you're getting to know a new product as it can help ramp up on learning the product. For example, when I first started with mobility controllers, I would make a change in the GUI and use the View Commands link to see what CLI changes were made.  This helped me get familiar with the CLI  a lot quicker as I could associate what change I wanted to make with the necessary CLI commands.  The same could probably be said for the mobility switches, but it sounds like I may be in the minority there.

We are an Airwave customer, and I will definitely look at upgrading to 7.7 given that we plan to replace all our Catalyst switches with Mobility switches.