Existing 8510 WLC going to HA SSO mode with additional new 8510-HA

[Darren Cooper]

Hi,

I'm have a stand-alone 8510 WLC running 8.0.100 and need to turn it into a HA (high availability)  SSO pair with a new 8510-HA (the HA SKU shows its designed to be a standby WLC)

The existing WLC is loaded with APs and I need to add the new WLC and configure HA SSO without service interruption. I have read up on this and the documentation is unclear as to the best approach. 

Can I pre-configure the new 8510-HA with its service port IP, redundancy IP and peer redundancy IP and simply connect the uplinks to the core and the redundancy port to the redundancy port of the existing 8510 without issue/downtime? (ensuring the redundancy mode is still stand-alone on the existing 8510)  Then when I get a change window, I will then configure redundancy on the existing 8510 and the 2 will sync up without the primary resetting. Am I correct? Or will the redundancy change initiate reloads of both 8510?

Or is there a better method? and is it documented anywhere?

Thanks for any advice!

Darren

[Stephen Rodriguez]

Darren, take a look at the WLC HA Deployment Guide:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/technotes/7-5/High_Availability_DG.pdf

When you configure the new 8510 as primary and enable SSO, this will reboot the controller.

HTH,
Steve

[Scott Fella]

To add to my friend Steve's comment, you have two options to deploy. You can go the SSO route so you have the controllers sync' or you can look at N+1, which doesn't sync but is a deployment model that has been around for a while. SSO is great when it's stable, but any upgrades or downgrades in the future will require a reboot of both units and then time for the sync and verification. I don't like the SSO deployment in a 24/7 environment just because there is a chance that both controllers can go down.  N+1, well you have to configure both controllers manually, but you can move AP's around if you want to perform an upgrade and yes the AP's will still reboot from an image upgrade, but it's faster.  SSO has become better, but it depends on the environment. 

You also should run either the v8.0.1150. Or the esc image from TAC which is v8.0.110.11 which has more fixes than v8.0.115.0.  I would not go with the new v8.1.102.0 yet since it's the first release.

-Scott

[Darren Cooper]

thanks guys. I have read the HA guide but have also read *somewhere* that given my new 8510 has the HA SKU I can apply this without reloading the Primary, am blowed if I can find this since though, hence the post!

Presuming I don't configure SSO on the primary, can I connect the new standby without the primary reloading? If so I can build in the daytime and configure during a change window.

Thanks,
Darren

[Scott Fella]

Darren,

If you don't enable SSO, then what you will be implementing is N+1.  You can build this and bring it on the network without any interruptions at all. 

-Scott

[Darren Cooper]

Happy days, thank you all :-)

[Abhishek Abhishek · Accepted solution]

Please refer to the link for HA (SSO) deployment guide-

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/technotes/7-5/High_Availability_DG.html