AP Image Download Progress indicator

[PiotrBurczyk80035]

Hi,

Dealing with Cisco C9800 controllers and tons of FlexConnect APs, I've faced numerous issues/challenges with APs software Image Download process. Some related with certain software bugs, others with branch site poor network connectivity, or controller config (like capwap window size) etc.

I'm often being ask how much time the onboarding process of new APs, or Controller software upgrade (and as a consequence AP software upgrade) would take, and most often I don't have firm answer to this question....sometimes it takes 30 minutes for AP to download the SW., upgrade and register on WLC, often it takes some hours, and sometimes it takes days, because what I've noticed is that if AP did not finish the download of the image from WLC within 30 minutes, it reboots and start process over again.

I was looking for an option on WLC (or AP using SSH, or console access) to be able to see the image download progress...like 30%, or 40MB of the img file already downloaded, but couldn't find it anywhere.

It's rather surprising, that this is not implemented on such advanced systems like WLC, or LWAPPs.

It'd help to understand the timing needed for AP to register in particular site, or estimate the WLC upgrade timeframe, or simply help troubleshooting AP join issues (often related with some specific bugs).

So...my question is, is there any way I can verify particular AP image download progress and things like current download speed, if using efficient AP Image Upgrade, etc.?

Perhaps something to request from Cisco as a feature request?

[Leo Laohoo]

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@PiotrBurczyk80035 wrote:
So...my question is, is there any way I can verify particular AP image download progress and things like current download speed, if using efficient AP Image Upgrade, etc.?

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None.  

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@PiotrBurczyk80035 wrote:
Perhaps something to request from Cisco as a feature request?

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Talk to the Cisco Account Manager and ask them to raise an enhancement request.  Good luck.  

[jtier]

While not a direct answer to see progress of AP image downloads, you may want to check into Efficient Image Upgrade for FlexConnect APs. It's been available since Gibraltar - 16.10.1. It downloads the new image to the master AP at the site then the other APs download the image locally from that AP.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/17-12/config-guide/b_wl_17_12_cg/m_eff_image_upgrade_ewlc.html#efficient-image-upgrade

Also, there is a predownload progress bar when predownloading or applying APSP to local mode APs. I'm unsure if that carries over to the FlexConnect APs as well.

[Rich R]

Like Leo says the only way to raise an enhancement request is through your Cisco account team, and it needs to be supported by a business case - in other words Cisco could make X million $$$ extra if this feature was implemented.  On that basis I doubt that your request would get anywhere because I can't see this being a "sellable" feature - meaning they won't spend money developing it because they won't expect to make any extra money from it.

On the other hand there are a whole lot of things that you can do to improve the situation...
- As you may know there are some major bugs relating to image download on 9800 which dev team battled to understand and resolve - now supposed to be resolved in 17.15.x and later - so best to make sure your code version is as up to date as possible (see TAC recommended link below).
- You can pre-download the software to APs *before* you activate the upgrade on the WLC and you can start that days/weeks before your upgrade.  A handful of APs will almost always re-download after upgrade (due to previously mentioned image download bugs) but that means 95%+ of your APs already have the image downloaded and just have to reload when you activate the upgrade.
- Old style Efficient Image Upgrade for Flexconnect APs mentioned already - personally I'm not a fan of it but in theory it should work. The caveat being that each site must have a unique Site Tag because the controller designates a primary AP for each AP model at the site which does a CAPWAP download from the WLC and then the other APs download from that AP.  If you made the mistake of re-using the same site tag on multiple sites then APs will be trying to download from other sites where the primary AP is located.  Note that Efficient Image Upgrade is now enabled by default unless you disable it. (it was disabled by default on AireOS)  Also the 9800 developers did not understand what the feature is/was/did so it's referred to as "predownload" (which is completely wrong) but that's what it's called on the CLI and the GUI!  It actually just means Flexconnect Efficient Image Upgrade for AP pre-download.  If Efficient Image upgrade is disabled then pre-download works as normal over CAPWAP from WLC to every AP which is rate limited by the WLC.
- You can manually download images to APs from a TFTP server located at each site (or centrally).  I've used site routers as the TFTP server for this before.  Note that the IOS TFTP server supports a maximum of 10 simultaneous TFTP downloads so if you have more than 10 APs you have to do them in batches.  That can be initiated from AP CLI or WLC CLI.  Again this can be done well in advance before the WLC upgrade.
- Cisco realised/accepted that CAPWAP and TFTP downloads were inherently slow and unreliable (especially after the recent problems with image corruption on CAPWAP downloads) so the new feature called Out-of-Band AP Image Download  (which uses https) was added.  That makes downloads much quicker and more reliable.  This is probably what you want to be moving to:
 https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/17-12/config-guide/b_wl_17_12_cg/m_eff_image_upgrade_ewlc.html#fht-oob
Given that this is how downloads are now recommended any enhancement request is likely to just result in them telling you to use this feature instead.

[Scott Fella]

I will chime in with my experience..... As mush as I would also like to see a progress bar or even a command you can run on the controller to show you the status %. You will always have those certain ap's that will take 6 hours or longer to get the image, ap's that will fail to accept the image, and those that will have a corrupt image and will re-download the image from the controller.  The best bet was to plan and make sure you understand the risk.  Pre-download the image to the ap weeks before an upgrade so you can determine which ap's you need to remediate.  That gives you time to also open a tac case and or RMA and access point.  Then the upgrade really is up to you on how you want to upgrade.  Maybe you don't want to do this and just want to upgrade all ap's at the same time, that is fine, but doesn't mean it will be 100%.  So take this for a grain of salt.  Learn from your experience and make adjustment for next time.  This goes for anything.... after a few, you will know what you have to do with little impact to the environment. Good luck.