Wireless Access

Apologies if this is a daft question, if I have a scenario of 1 x master and 2 x locals do the locals need to have identical config ??  IE if they are at 2 x different locations so have differing vlans, IP's, AP groups, RAP whitelists etc, ?? 

Scenario is 2 differing masters, changing to locals pointing to a master ??

All of your locations will have unique configurations like IP address, vlan, and hostname. However the wifi settings under the AP Group will be syncronized form the master to the locals.

Once you join the Local to a master, it will block you from making changes to shared settings under things like AP Groups.

_ELiasz

Hi,

You need to ensure that all the controllers having the Image code, with the latest Image we have option of centralised Image management, if it is not enabled, you need to update the same code as the master in all the locals.

You need to configure VLAN, VLAN interfaces and IP address manually in all the controllers coz, L2 and L3 wired config will not be pushed from the master to the Locals.

Once the Master-Local relation is up, Master will push the WLAN ( AP-Group ) config, Policies and local DB will be pushed to all the Locals. hence you need not worry about WLAN config in the Locals.

Please feel free for any further clarity on this

Venu, thanks, my concern is that I am swapping 2 masters to locals and will point them at a fresh pair of masters. Any gotchas ??

If you are pointing them at a new set of masters, i would simply factory reset the old Master and join it as a local.

If you don't factory reset them, go to

Network > Controller > System Settings

just set the device to local, and point it at the master. All the config should stay intact for local settings, and it will get a new config from the master for the WLAN settings.

I can't think of any gotchas in this case. If you are concerned, just do the factory reset and build from scratch as a local.

_ELiasz

Hi,

If you follow some best practices you will never face any issue in this scenario.

Best practice is, bring up the controller which you want to bring up as a Master without connecting to the network. here you need to remove Master-ip from the local if you want to convert it to a Master. if you are happy with the L2 and L3 config, do not disturb any thing.

Now Apply Master-ip in the proposed Local Controller and it will reboot then look at the L2 and L3 config, if you are ok leave it

Now first join the Master to the network then Local 1 now ensure that the IPSec tunnel is up between Master and L1 and then Join the L2 to the network.

Here I'm assuming that you want to continue with the wireless config but you want to swap the controller roles.

Hope you got some more clarity on this.

Please feel free for any further help on this.

Eliasz, thanks herein lies the dilemma, as i am limited for downtime so want the masters to retain their config but become locals.  I was thinking out of hours connect them to the locals that will become the masters to get the config, then hook these up and swap them to masters, if that makes sense, my main concern is when swapping the masters to locals that the config will get wiped....

When you switch the role from Master to Local, or Local to Master, the controller is forced to reboot. When the controller reboots, all the APs connected to it will also reboot unless you have some kind of redundancy configured for APs.

"as i am limited for downtime so want the masters to retain their config but become locals"

If you switch the master to local, it will reboot, and as a local will retain it's configuration until it is joined to a new master. So you can convert them to local, and after reboot they should have the same config. When you join them to a new master, i believe they will need to reboot again, and then get the new config from the new master. At this point the APs again will need to reboot again i believe and will get their new settings.

Settings a Master to local should not effect the config. It will only get a new config when you join it to the new master.

_ELiasz

Thanks, chaps, so what happens if the new Masters 3600's have just basic config on , just to get them up and running ? So no config for the locals to pull down ? 

So scenario is 2 x locals with full config, changed to locals and pointing at Master VIP address, masters with basic config