8.0 Change in AP Controller HA behavior?

[cmonks119]

Has anything changed recently with the way APs react to changing HA Primary/Secondary/Tertiary controllers? Previously I was running 7.6.100.0, and when I would make changes to AP HA settings (either on the WLC or Prime), the APs would move and join the new primary controller in 2-5 minutes or so. Now it seems like they aren't automatically moving at all without a reboot. Is there something i'm missing to get an AP to go move to another controller without requiring a reboot? 

Thanks

[Francesco Molino]

I think you're talking about AP SSO. Check WLC high availability SSO.

It is working as a cluster (1 WLC is active and the other one is passive). In this setup, AP and users sessions are kept and no AP reboot and/or client disconnection.

SSO works with some WLC (e.q.: 2504 not supporting this feature, 5508 yes)

[cmonks119]

Yes i'm familiar with AP SSO, i'm talking about manually moving an AP from one Standalone WLC (or HA Pair) to another. Not a fail-over scenario, but just moving for maintenance, etc. 

[Francesco Molino]

Ok. I get your point now. Since I'm doing wireless, I've ever seen AP rebooting to do all discovery and join process (complete process including reboot is around 3 minutes) while they need to mount their tunnel with new WLC.

Are your sure that during your 5 minutes with version 7.6, AP was not reloading?

[cmonks119]

Yes, the APs would move to the new WLC just by changing the primary WLC HA setting a couple minutes later. They did not reboot, just re-associated to the new WLC. I'm finding that with 8.0 now I have to manually reset the AP and it will joint the new WLC after rebooting.. 

[cmonks119]

Anyone? How do you guys gracefully move APs from one controller to another? This new behavior is a real pain having to reboot each AP to move them.. I'd really like to know if this is by design or some kind of bug.