Force all APs to failover to secondary controller

[craig5258]

Hi,

All of our APs are configured with primary and secondary controllers under High Availability.

Does anyone know if there is a simple way to force all of the APs to failover to the secondary without restarting the WLC? A service to stop, something to disable etc?

Just for DR testing purposes.

Thanks.

[Sandeep Choudhary]

Do you have wireless management system  ? If yes then you can push a template on all APs about primary and secondray controller in click.

Cisco Prime 2.2 version:

Configure > Lightweight AP configuration Template 

Regards

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[craig5258]

Thanks for the reply. We don't have a management system - all configuration is done on the controller.

If I'm onsite, I can just pull the Management cable out but I wondered if there was a quick way to do it remotely.

[Seb Rupik]

Hi there,

Assuming your APs are using L3 CAPWAP, why don't you create an ACL upstream of the primary WLC to block all CAPWAP control/data traffic (UDP/5246 and UDP/5247).

cheers,

Seb.

[craig5258]

Thanks - that's an option. I'll make a note of those UDP ports.

[Sandeep Choudhary]

If you dont have any management system then:

 run"show ap summary" to get the list of access point associated to the first WLC and then use the commands config ap primary-base <controller_name> <ap> <controller_IP_Addre> 

config ap secondary-base <controller_name> <ap> [controller_IP_Addre]

to config them with a new primary controller. 

REgards

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[craig5258]

Reconfiguring the APs doesn't really simulate a WLC failure. The APs need to think the primary is down/unavailable and failover themselves to prove the process works.

If all they do is check for the availability of the Management IP - maybe blocking the CAPWAP traffic is the only other option.

[patoberli · Accepted solution]

Another way is to shutdown the LAN ports on the Switch to which the primary WLC is connected. Once it's offline, the APs should move. If they don't, simply enable the LAN ports on the switch again.

But just to confirm, you don't have a HA WLC system running, right? You have two WLC in standalone mode?

If they are in HA mode, simply reboot the primary or force a switchover on the command line.

[craig5258]

Thanks for the reply - yes, that would work. You're correct we have 2 standalone controllers.

[ecarbajo]

Hello,   here is a python script using netconf,  valid for Catalyst 9800:

https://github.com/eliascarbajo/Cisco-wlc-APs-swap