Setting up equipment at our shop before bringing it onsite?

[aaronbooker]

I'm wondering if I can setup my customer's equipment at our shop first, and then bring it onsite?

It would save quite a bit of time if I could preconfigure my client's Thunderbolt appliances at our shop (what we would do in the "real world") prior to delivering them to the client's networks.

I'm in the midst of installing our internal gear now, but was thinking that it would be a big time saver to do their Thunderbolt gear simultaneously.

Aaron

[Marc Bresniker · Accepted solution]

Hi Aaron, you can stage certain aspects of the equipment before going onsite in order to be more efficient and less disruptive at the end customer location. You will need to add your customer in the Thunderbolt Portal in order to get the log in details for the Thunderbolt Appliance. The set up instructions explain that process. You can certainly pre-configure the access point with any security and SSID information ahead of time. If you are going to modify any settings on the switch, it may have an impact on other existing settings in the network depending on where the switch is added to the next work. You may also choose to change the device admin user name and password for the AP and switch ahead of time as well.

My test test Thunderbolt network is at a relative's location. I set everyting up at home one evening and then then simply went to the other location and added it to the existing network. Only added tasks were updaing the some PCs with a new SSID Profile.

As you go through this process, please provide any learnings to our user group, there could be some best practices that can be shared.

-Marc

[aaronbooker]

Marc,

I just wanted to be sure that any temporary info that the appliance harvested from our test network wouldn't "live on" in my client's environment...

Sounds like it won't - that's great - and it will really speed up deployment.

Thanks,

Aaron

[Marc Bresniker · Accepted solution]

Very good question, let me check back with the team to see if there is a suggested best practice here. When I set it up, it was at home on a very small network. I can't recall if the new discovery when at the end customer location showed any previous discovered defvices as broken links in addition to any newly discovered devices. This may point a needed feature "Staging mode" to avoid discovery in the lab before going to the final location.

[Michael Holloway]

Marc,  yes they would still appear.  Missing devices at the old (staging) location would appear and be indicated as missing.  However, the Options button (Gear) in the topology screen offers the option to 'Reset all topology and monitoring', which will cause all presently missing devices (devices at the old location) to be removed completely.  This allows the TBA to be staged, but you have to revisit the portal to clear any discovered devices *after* you have completed the staging and disconnected the TBA from the staging network.  This can be done before the TBA is actually delivered to the end-user location.

-mike

[dcorley]

One potential best practice to consider and analyze is creating a benign staging area at your office first ... one in which no other devies are connected on the subnet. This will allow elimination of the step to "remove" your office's devices from the original inventory.

The more practical benefit of pre-staging for these trials, as Marc suggests, is to get the switch and wireless access point properly configured nad tested prior to deployment at the customer site. The multiple manual steps of configuration of switch and WAP from their manufacturer's defaults will most likely be the primary source of deployment error. Pre-staging, configuration and subsequent testing reduces the chance that the errors will propagate to the customer site.

For the group,...what are the primary reasons you pre-stage at your office? If you were provided the ability of not having to pre-stage, would you drop ship equipment directly to the customer site?

Dave

[Brian Bergin]

Prestaging equipment just makes disruptions at the customer site less of a problem.  If I can take a router or WAP or switch to a customer plug-and-play ready they are much happier.  I still charge them the same as I would if I were at the site doing the config, but the customer is happier if they have less downtime (plus it makes us look that much better becuase we can get in and out fast - they think we're wizards!).

[dcorley]

Thanks, Brian.

Based upon your current experience with the Thunderbolt appliance, ESW switch and WAP4410n, from the moment you open the first box at your office lab until youve completed your validation testing and packed the WAP and ESW and TB appliance in their boxes,  on average how long would you estimate it takes a trained tech who's done this sort of pre-staging with this equipment ten times before to pre-stage the WAP and ESW alone?

Interested in comments from all community participants on this question.

Dave