Azure 9800CL Flex connect with C9115AXE issues. Need help from Experts

[AeroAdmin]

Hey everyone, 

I hope someone can provide some insight into some issues we are having trying to deploy our new Wireless network. We just spun up a WLC 9800CL in Azure (license has not been applied yet) and we have about 24 AP split between two remote locations. 

We have our tunnels working and the APs are able to see the controller. The controller shows that there are 24 APs that are not joined. 

The majority of these units are C9115AXE units. We have all the profiles configured and I put in the MAC address for two of the units to one of the site profiles we configured but we are not getting anything

We are not sure what to do to get the APs to actually JOIN. We thought this might be a firmware issue but we are also having troubles with the firmware not wanting to update. 

Here is what we are doing to try to update the firmware ... we are trying to upgrade to firmware:

C9800-40-universalk9_wlc.17.09.05.SPA.bin

Step 1. We upload the firmware to the device

Step 2. Firmware gets installed 

Step 3. We save and activate the firmware

Step 4. We wait for activation 

Session "Times out" every time we do this 

Step 5. We log back into the Controller and we get the message to commit

Step 6. We go ahead and commit

Step 7. After commit we reboot the controller but we end up with the same firmware. 17.7.1

We have tried this a few times and we keep getting the same results. We have not been able to update the firmware on the controller. 

So we are not sure why the APs will not join. Running a packet capture shows DTLS Client Hello Packets and also CAPWAP-Control Packets that have malfored packet errors. So not sure if that has anything to do with the issues we are having. 

Any help or guidance that anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you!

[marce1000 · Accepted solution]

 - As far as this upgrade issue is concerned ; since you are using 9800 CL anyway (for Azure) ; simply download the correct virtual controller version from Cisco downloads and deploy it in Azure again. You can save the running-config first on the existing controller and import it on the new controller (e.g.). Besides you can't use C9800-40-universalk9_wlc.17.09.05.SPA.bin for the 9800 CL controller.

   Then first examine it's configuration with the CLI command show tech wireless and feed the output from that into
    Wireless Debug Analyzer

                       After all of that , check if you can make the APs join ,

 M.

[AeroAdmin]

Thank you for the feedback ... you were correct, after taking a closer look at the firmware, we were not aware that there was a cloud only version of the firmware that we needed to be using since this is a cloud 9800CL. Once we downloaded the correct cloud version firmware, we were able to get the controller updated. Thank you! 

This still leaves the issue where I can't get the APs to Join any site profile. I don't know if this is a License issue since we just spun up the controller but have no license for it.

[marce1000]

               >....This still leaves the issue where I can't get the APs to Join any site profile.

                 - Review   and validate the controller configuration with :
            1) CLI command :               wireless config validate
            2) Issue the CLI command show tech wireless and feed the output from that into :  Wireless Config Analyzer

   For item 2) at least all red errors reported in the wlc-checkresults Tab, must be corrected (if any)