AP1815i mobility express configuration differences between APs/controllers

[arnaud5]

Hello,

I’m struggling with something very curious, and i’d be very glad if some of you had an idea. 

Previous situation :

6 AP aironet 1815i in mobility express mode installed.

1 SSID with wpa2

So far, so good. If I switch the controller off or if I disconnect it, a new controller is elected and everything worked fine. 

New situation :

we introduced vlans in our organization

2 SSIDs with wpa2, one in vlan 10, one in vlan 20

each vlan has its dhcp scope

at some point in my process, I temporarily created a third ssid on native vlan for testing purpose then deleted it 

i also did some corrections on one of the dhcp scope (added a dns suffix)

—> seems to work

There comes the mystery :

if i disconnect the controller, or if I set a new ap as the controller, I lose my last changes, my test ssid comes back to life and the dns suffix I added on the dhcp scope disappears.

it works every time. I tried to alternatively select each ap as the controller, then do the changes -> nothing

i did the changes on one ap, then I did a “clear all config” on every other to force them to connect again to the controller -> nothing

i’m running out of ideas. Thanks for reading me and for any hint you could have.

[patoberli · Accepted solution]

Have you hit the Save button on the master AP after making the changes?

[arnaud5]

1st reaction : it can't be that obvious, I'm not so stupid !

Spoiler : yes, I am

We did a lot of tests and changes in the configuration, and I don't remember hitting this button once. I think that everything was working until we try to reboot the controller or force elect a new one.

Thanks for the eye opening !

[patoberli]

Yeah, if you only hit the Apply button, it's only applied in the running-configuration, which is only in RAM. The startup-configuration, which resides on the flash storage, will not be update, until you hit the Save button. That is typical for nearly all Cisco hardware. The idea behind is, if you break something with your configuration, you can simply reboot it and it has the previous working configuration.

[arnaud5]

That makes perfectly sense.

Thanks again