vWLC design query

[illusion_rox]

Dear Experts,

Need your advise to design below requirement, I am confused on the licensing part.

Customer has 2 x sites, and 400 APs, they are interested in going with vWLC, so below are 2 options they might select

Option 1: 1 x vWLC on each site

Option 2 : 2 x vWLC on each site

So in either case, do I need to purchase 400 AP licenses or 800 (400 each site) ?

[Leo Laohoo]

vWLC can only support up to 200 APs.
So depending on budget, I'd go for a vWLC at each site.

[illusion_rox]

Only 200? 

But in datasheet 3000 are mentioned for large scale image

[Scott Fella]

To add to Leo's comments, license depends on how many ap's will associate to that controller. You need to look at full failover scenario's. I would look at a 5520 at each site as I don't really like the vWLC's, but thats me. If your design is local switching, then you only need to purchase one license for each AP. An example would be using a 5520 at site A with 400 ap license and a 5520 setup as a standby unit (N+1) which will not require any license but allow for full failover.

[illusion_rox]

I am in competition with Aruba and they are able to provide any number of controllers with only one set of licenses. Is that the case with us also? 

Like for example if customer buys 4 controllers 2 at each site do they need to buy 400 licenses or 800?

And second case if customer places one controller on each sitr then perhaps only 400 right? 

Please help to answer for both scenarios

[Ryo Kato]

400 AP are pretty large, consider if you really want vWLC. Take a look at features NOT supported

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/release/notes/crn85mr2.html#wlc-vwlc

especially the line "AP on local mode not supported" (means all 400 AP will run in FlexMode, kind of uncontrolled and messy at that scale)

Beside that, what Scott said. Hardware WLC with HA licence as standby and run in N+1 (kind of RAID5) or SSO (kind of RAID1)