Wireless Access

Hi,
I have a AOS6 and AOS8 setup. AOS8 consists of three 7210 in a cluster.
Planning to move 1000 APs from AOS6 controller to AOS8 cluster. I will be provisioning APs to point to AOS8 cluster. Any advice on number of APs(like 100,200,or 300) I can select for migration. And how long the whole process will take. Appreciate if anyone who has done real migration in a large environment can provide approximate time taken for the manual process and number of AP selection.

Engineer answer - it depends.

 

I've done an upgrade of 112 APs and migrated 10 at a time until I got to 30 successful, then failed the remaining 80 at one time. The time it takes is not long, but it also depends what your doing besides upgrade - for example, as part of ours, I also enabled CPSEC with auto-cert provisioning, so not only did my APs have to download the new code and install it, but then had to pull a certificate and reboot to use it for 'authentication' to the controller. The process will depend on the link from the controller and the APs, but in general it doesn't take more than like 15 minutes per batch in my experience. Doesn't really matter how many up to at least 100 at a time, though you may have a few stragglers. 

 

Just my $0.02

My configurations are mostly around 150-200 access points. For migrations from 6.x to 8.x i make use of the LMS IP address in the System AP profile to migrate my AP's. That way i can migrate smaller AP groups with their own System AP profile.

Create the same AP group names on your old and new controllers.

 

The migration of a AP's takes the same aprox. time as you provision a new AP.

Start with a small AP group 

 

Note: Becarefull you dont use one default system AP profile for all AP Groups ;) 

Similar to Marcel's suggestion, I also have taken whatever master controller discovery method you use (DNS/DHCP) and make a new record that points to the new 8.x cluster. Then I'll either provision groups of APs via the AP group, or via a common AP hardware platform to point to that new master and migrate from there. That way I have the option to push an AP back to 6.x if needed as well.

I have created a same migrate AP group name in 6.x and 8.x controller. I use DHCP option 43 pointing to 8.x lms-ip. Did initial move with around 100  with couple of reboots while changing the AP and finally to move correct AP group in 8. Took around 30-45 mins