Strategy to migrate fabric aireos controller to cat9800

[TomM]

I would like to migrate off of a fabric enabled aireos wlc to a Cat9800-CL.  Is there a process to perform an in place migration?  I know we have that for accesspoints.  The existing wlc was a greenfield device via DNA Center.  Are there any other options?  

thanks,

[Flavio Miranda]

Hi

 If you are looking for something like a vmotion I dont think it is possible. What I can think about is backup WLC and import in the WLC on the cloud.

[rasmus.elmholt]

Not an expert, but I your fabric is configured correct you should be able to remove the old WLCs, and add the new one. And then push the Intent to it. As all your configuration for the FEW should be configured in the DNAC Design/Intent.

[markus.forrer]

I'm not sure about the process, but I will have todo the same in a few weeks if the pyhsical c9800 is delivered. (migrating from c9800-cl to physical one)

At the end you can have both wlc integrated into the fabric. My planed workflow looks like this:
- Add the new wlc to the fabric
- Assigne the floors to the new wlc and provision it
And now I'm not sure how to get the AP's away from the old wlc.
But If there is no automated workflow I will do it by cli.

I don't think there is something like the ap replacement, but in the end like rasmus already mentioned, all configuration is already in DNAC with the SSID and Network Profiles. If you assign a floor to the new wlc the configuration is pushed to the new wlc. And then you just have to get the ap connected to the new wlc....

[TomM]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

My situation is a bit different that I am migrating from an AireOS controller which is fabric-enabled to a Cat9800-CL controller also to be in the same fabric.

I like the idea of just removing the existing controller out of the fabric and replacing it with the Cat9800, provisioning, and the reloading the APs to see what they will do.  All the controller config is managed by DNA Center and I don't think we are doing anything beyond that.  I'm a little more concerned with the aireos aps migrating to the ios xe version and how that would work.  Downside would be I lose all the telemetry collected.  A refresh in place would be a better workflow.  I'd hate to brick the access points.

Anyone from Cisco know how this works?  Help us out?

thanks

[willleong805]

I was trying to do the same thing… 

I just able to create the mobility group with the new controller

But when i tried to provision the new controller as secondary managed ap location of the primary controller’s managed primary locations, DNAC always prompt no primary controller to that floor but it actually has…

So what is your final plan to do the migration? Thanks!

[TomM]

A year later and we still haven't migrated.  Not a huge priority based on other projects plus we are have stability issues with 9800CL HA SSO that we need to solve before we go production.  However we are looking to start this back up soon.  I'll post details once we get there.  Strategy is to remove 3504 from fabric and un-provision it as primary wlc for our sites.  Turn off the 3504 and add the 9800CL HA Pair as the primary and then add it to the fabric.

[Parthiv Shah]

We have some migration scenarios covered. 

1. Create mobility group with both WLC in same mobility group.

2. Start migrating APs

there could be some caveats with latest Cisco Dnac version or it might have made it easier. Please refer Cisco live session BRKEWN-2004 for more information.

[TomM]

Thanks.  And this is your recommendation for fabric enabled wireless?

thanks

[Parthiv Shah]

Yes. That is the recommendation for both fabric and non-fabric ssid.