topic AP's: move from 5520 to 9840 in controlled and selective manner. IRCM? in Wireless

AP's: move from 5520 to 9840 in controlled and selective manner. IRCM?

gary-gatten — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 21:08:57 GMT

Looking for opinions on moving ~900 AP's from 5520's to 9840's. Mostly 3802's, but quite a few 9130's and a few others. Yes, they are all supported on the 9800 series.

What are the "best" ways to selectively move AP's from 5520 to 9840? I read a few posts re prestaging OS, ensuring certs are valid, etc. - all good stuff - but no details re moving say.... these dozen AP's, or these 200 in Building X. A dozen, eh - not so bad to do manually, but I don't want to move hundreds at a time using a GUI or individual CLI.

I'm investigating IRCM, as I really don't want to move everything at once over several days. Seems too risky? Outage during the week of implementation is ok, but everything must be working following week. Currently working on getting the 9840's online for POC / testing and moving the WLC configs over.

If it helps, I have access to DNAC, perhaps make use of some widget in there?

TIA!

Re: AP's: move from 5520 to 9840 in controlled and selective manner. I

eglinsky2012 — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 21:56:24 GMT

I started off small - first a single AP at my desk for testing, then half a dozen APs in our office area. Then a small building (~6 APs), worked my way up. I had no qualms moving large buildings with 100 APs to 9880s all in one go. These controllers can reboot and have hundreds/thousands of APs join them and start downloading code (if it wasn't predownloaded ahead of time). So, from the 9840's perspective, moving a bunch of APs at once to them shouldn't be a problem. It's more your own decision about risk management. The fewer APs that move at a time, the less angry people you'll have if something is missing or doesn't work on the new controller. We have very few buildings/APs with oddball configs, so the more that move over, the less risky the moves become, assuming you have your site tags configured per best practice (see below).

Cisco Prime made choosing which APs to move and to which controller and when (scheduled for a later time) made the migrations a breeze.

Otherwise, standard practice of keeping adjacent APs on the same controllers applies. Do entire buildings at a time, or at least entire floors or wings of buildings, if possible, to minimize roaming between controllers (even if they're in a mobility group together); avoid "salt and pepper" situations.

Most importantly, if you haven't seen this, spend some time with the 9800 best practices guide and make sure your site tags, etc. are to spec: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/technical-reference/c9800-best-practices.html

Once you have your configuration completed and tested, you can run the config through the config analyzer and it will suggest further improvements as needed: https://cway.cisco.com/wireless-config-analyzer/

Re: AP's: move from 5520 to 9840 in controlled and selective manner. I

Wes Schochet — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 22:22:12 GMT

You can enter the commands to change the High Availability settings via CLI. There are many ways to "automate" this from copy and paste batches of commands into the CLI to scripts that connect via SSH and send the commands. It all depends on how much effort you want to put in.

CLI:

config ap primary-base c9800-1.myco.com c9120-AP-1 10.1.2.3

config ap secondary-base c9800-2.myco.com c9120-AP-1 10.1.2.4

Over time, I have written scripts that log in to my controllers via SSH and issue the commands to move APs from one to the other - I have primary / secondary pairs and this is a good way for me to make changes and do upgrades without any down time.

Re: AP's: move from 5520 to 9840 in controlled and selective manner. I

Leo Laohoo — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 23:24:39 GMT

@gary-gatten wrote:
What are the "best" ways to selectively move AP's from 5520 to 9840?

I believe it was early 2022 where I moved about 2k APs (2800/3800/4800/1560 and 9130) from AireOS to a 9800.

I did this all in one day and started from 11 am (during business hours) and each AP took 4 minutes and 45 seconds to "migrate" to the 9800.

NOTE: "migrate" means the duration it took the AP to reboot (with the new IOS-XE code), joined the controller, got the correct tags and started taking clients.

Re: AP's: move from 5520 to 9840 in controlled and selective manner. I

gary-gatten — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 14:03:17 GMT

I read some of your posts, good info!

What method did you use to move the AP's? I was reading through the hierarchy an AP uses to pick the WLC to join. I was thinking about messing with dns, but perhaps as Wes mentioned, batching some CLI commands is the way to go? Interested in the process you used; 2000 in a day is a lot. Unless of course nothing worked - anyone can do that 😉

Re: AP's: move from 5520 to 9840 in controlled and selective manner. I

gary-gatten — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 19:28:49 GMT

@Leo Laohoo , did you use commands such as "config ap primary-base c9800-1.myco.com c9120-AP-1 10.1.2.3"; or did you mess with any of the dns resolution options - or other methods AP's use to discover their WLC's?

Re: AP's: move from 5520 to 9840 in controlled and selective manner. I

Leo Laohoo — Sat, 29 Jun 2024 00:16:04 GMT

@gary-gatten wrote:
did you use commands such as "config ap primary-base c9800-1.myco.com c9120-AP-1 10.1.2.3"; or did you mess with any of the dns resolution options - or other methods AP's use to discover their WLC's?

The command is one of four commands I use for Cheetah OS. Classic IOS has five commands.

I never messed with DNS, however, I did change the DHCP Option 43 to point to the new 9800 WLC.