Wireless Access

hello Airheads,

i'm sure this wont take long to answer.

I have a customer who wants to know if you can have 2 x standlone hardware 7210 controllers (OS8) with licence pooling enabled?

Just to re-iterate they don't have a Mobility master.

cheers

pete

Yes, in an active/standby configuration you can have two AOS 8 controllers.

thanks for getting back Jerrod,

i was under the impression that the OS8 standalone cant support a master\local configuration.

That you can have failover to another standalone master.

Is this wrong?

cheers

pete

With 2 controllers, running OS 8, without an MM, you can configure a standalone with another standalone as a VRRP backup. This is similar to Master/Master in OS 6 and earlier. VRRP needs to be configured and database synchronization also needs to be configured as part of VRRP.

With just 2 controllers, you cannot deploy what was referred to in OS 6 and earlier as Master/Local and have failover.

OS 8 has 3 install designs, listed below in no particular order.

The first is Mobility Master (MM) with Mobility Controllers (MCs). The MM is strictly a management/configuration machine, which distributes the configuration out to the MCs. For redundancy, you would need two or more MCs. An MM environment supports clustering, which provides failover with stateful preservation, meaning clients essentially do not lose connection or state on an MC failure.

The second is standalone. This is a controller running by itself. Standalone is where the configuration is done, and APs and client traffic is processed by the standalone controller. If you would like redundancy, you can deploy a second standalone, with VRRP and database synchronization, and you will have an Active/Standby failover environment. Any failure would disconnect the clients which will have to reconnect. It is reasonably quick (depending upon the number of APs and clients), but stateful connections will be lost.

The third is Master Controller Mode (MCM). This is kinda like the MM mode, but instead of an MM being the management platform, a controller is the managment platform (we refer to this similar to OS 6 and earlier as the Master). In MCM the Master controller is ONLY a management machine. In OS 6 and earlier, a Master controller could terminal APs; that is not the case with OS 8. So with 2 controllers, with MCM, one is the Master and the other is the MC (similar to a "local" controller in previous versions of ArubaOS). The difference is that in previous versions, an APs and clients could connect to the local, and it the local failed, they could then connect to the Master. You can't do this with OS 8. So in order to achieve failover in an MCM environment, you would need a Master and 2 MCs. You could implement VRRP, LMS-IP/Backup LMS-IP, or Fast Failover also known as High Availability (HA). All three of these failover methods will have clients lose their stateful connections.

I hope this helps,

I hope this helps,

hi David,

thanks for your reply appreciate you taking the time.

One last question.

In standalone mode with a second standalone (for redundancy) and VRRP for databse synchronisation for an active\standby solution.

Can you still have centralized licencing environment?

Or do you need 2 x lots of licences?

cheers

pete

Yes, you will be fine with that. Make sure that you set up VRRP and also database synchronization.

thanks David,

i always like to make sure at pre-sales stage what we are proposing is a workable solution.

excellent stuff.

cheers

pete

I would add that while you CAN do this, one might ask themselves if they should.

You lose out on all the AOS8 goodies (AirMatch, clustering, live upgrades, Multizone, etc) and operationally, it's more difficult to migrate from standalone 8.X to MM-based 8.X than 6.X to 8.X as you can't use the Migration Tool.

So add the cost of duplicating professional services and downtime to essentially re-do all the work if they want to go with an MM and things might even out price-wise.

Food for thought ;)

I agree with you. In my opinion, stateful failover with a clustering environment alone is worth the price to go to an MM/MC environment.

appreciate all the feedback chaps and completely agree.

The benefits of the MM far outweigh a standalone deplyment (v8).

However.... long story!!!

regards

pete

i have another question.

The customer has said they will go with MM Now!!

But they are asking can you have 2 x MM-VA-50's together instead

of paying for a MM-VA-500?

cheers

pete

You CAN purchase 2xMM-VA-50 licenses to stack them on an MM to get 100 MM licenses, but note, you must provision and deploy the MM-VA-500 appliance in terms of CPU, RAM, and Disk.

thanks Jerrod,

once again appreciate you taking the time.

cheers

pete

hi Jerrod,

me again.

quick question.

ref: when we apply the 2 lots of MM licences

We have to get the MM passphrase from the Mobility master and

register it to an MM licence.

Will it matter that we can only register it to one of the MM licences?

cheers

pete

You would just activate the two licenses against the same MM passphrase to get two license keys. Let me know if I'm not following the question though.

you are absolutely following. Right on the money.

thanks again Jerrod