Wireless Access

Hi everyone.  I took a look at some of the previous threads on migrating to new master controllers and was hoping for some tips on how to do it for our environment.

 

Currently we've got two 7240XMs with one as a local and the other as the master running 6.5 code.  We're going to be migrating a whole bunch of APs from our old environment to the 7240XMs so we purchased two 7220s to act as new masters and have the 7240XMs be locals only.

 

What woud be the best way to introduce the 7220s as the new master/standby and to reconfigure the 7240XM as a local from its master role today?  Should I add one of the 7220s as a master standby first and failover the local 7240XM to that one?  Then what?

 

Thanks for any tips.

 

Hi,

 

My advise would be to strongly consider ArubaOS 8.x with a MM/MC setup, and put all MC's in a cluster.

How many AP's and users? 

Please take care of sizing as the 7220 has lower values as master then the 7240XM, hence my advise to upgrade to 8.x.

Create a new setup with the MM and at first only the 7220 in the cluster would give a option to migrate AP by AP to the new setup. 

 

Hope this helps

 

 

mrzero, I would love to go to AOS8 with MMs but it's not in the cards just yet (we're looking at Q1).  For now I'm going to have to go with the 7220s and 6.5.

 Should I add one of the 7220s as a master standby first and failover the local 7240XM to that one?  Then what?

Yes. 

 

Detail: When you add the 7220, make sure the configuration synchronizes successfully before removing the previous master.  Also, when you add the 7220 as the master/standby to the existing 7240XM, you would need to re-point the local to the VRRP between the master and the backup master, because the the existing master will go away and the local is statically configured to point to the ip address of the old master.

 

You could then remove the existing 7240XM as a master (the 7220 would become the active master) and then add the second 7220 as the backup master.

 

You would then make the removed 7240XM  a local.

 

There are a few gotchas and some potential issues that might not make this possible or feasible, so you might want to contact TAC or a VAR to guide you through this process:  https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/

 

 

 

 

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@cjoseph wrote:

 Should I add one of the 7220s as a master standby first and failover the local 7240XM to that one?  Then what?

Yes. 

 

Detail: When you add the 7220, make sure the configuration synchronizes successfully before removing the previous master.  Also, when you add the 7220 as the master/standby to the existing 7240XM, you would need to re-point the local to the VRRP between the master and the backup master, because the the existing master will go away and the local is statically configured to point to the ip address of the old master.

 

You could then remove the existing 7240XM as a master (the 7220 would become the active master) and then add the second 7220 as the backup master.

 

You would then make the removed 7240XM  a local.

 

There are a few gotchas and some potential issues that might not make this possible or feasible, so you might want to contact TAC or a VAR to guide you through this process:  https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/

 

 

 

 

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Thanks for the info.  Question, for that last step about making the 7240XM into a local, can it easily be done from SSH'ing into the box or does it require a complete wipe of the config?

 

It does not require a wipe, but it requires a reboot. 

Hi everyone, just wanted to get some additional feedback as I've discovered some interesting ways in how our APs were setup.  

 

If I follow the process discussed above, eventually the current 7240XM master will completely go away at least temporarily.  However I have found out that all of the APs connecting to the 7240XM local have the master's IP "hard coded" which I assume they use as part of their boot process?  If that IP disappears and we can't leverage DNS or DHCP option 43 as a fallback, can we force the APs to establish their tunnels to the local controllers via their primary/backup LMS configs?

 

If we have to change that hard coded setting, is this something that needs to be done on every single AP or is there a profile setting that could be used so that it's applicable to all of them?

 

Sorry for the newb questions.  :)

 

 

Is the IP address of the master in the same range as the locals? If you you could use the master ip as vrrp between the locals.

If you setup the LMS/BLMS for a AP group the AP’s will use those.

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@lobotiger wrote:

If I follow the process discussed above, eventually the current 7240XM master will completely go away at least temporarily.  However I have found out that all of the APs connecting to the 7240XM local have the master's IP "hard coded" which I assume they use as part of their boot process?  If that IP disappears and we can't leverage DNS or DHCP option 43 as a fallback, can we force the APs to establish their tunnels to the local controllers via their primary/backup LMS configs?

 

If we have to change that hard coded setting, is this something that needs to be done on every single AP or is there a profile setting that could be used so that it's applicable to all of them? 

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As Colin mentioned, once the master 7220 is introduced as a standby master and the VRRP IP is created, anything pointing to the 7240XM master should be updated to use the VRRP IP instead of the 7240XM's physical IP.

 

Since the APs most likely have had the master IP (not the LMS IP/backup LMS IP) statically set, they will need to be via the AP provisioning menu on the controller. The plus side is, you should be able to reprovision all APs of a particular model at once, since they'll all point to the same VRRP address.