Match settings from one wireless controller to another

[Valkyrie3]

I'm looking for some practical advice on how to match the settings from one wireless controller to another, both are Cisco virtual Wireless Controllers on the same software version although one is configured as large and one is small (total number of clients is just over 100 so small config is no problem).  I'm wondering can I take the configs from each WLC, match the wireless config sections keeping parts like the name, IP address, TACAC sections the same and upload the updated config to the controller?  I've checked the Cisco bets practices which mentions not to make changes during upload/downloads, not to move configs between different controllers and to be careful which lines to change so it seems this should work and I've done similar with IOS devices but want to be careful before trying it with a wireless controller.

To give a bit of background, the two wireless controllers were set up on this site by another company and it appears the first controller was partially set up and then the second one was fully set up and everything has been running on the second one.  I'd like to set up the first one to match the second so it's ready as a standby controller however on looking through the web interface I can see there's a lot of changes so I think it would be better to try and match it through the config file than manually through the interface.  The AP's are configured to use the second controller as their main one and the first controller as the secondary controller.

config to the controller?

[Haydn Andrews · Accepted solution]

are these vWLCs or virtual 9800s.

9800 - you can take a show run and edit the settings that need to be unique and then paste it onto the other WLC. Like wise if you just need to do the wireless sections you can just copy those sections

vWLC - take a backup and edit the file and do the same thing

[Valkyrie3]

Thanks for the response, they're vWLCs so I'll give it a go editing the config file to match

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

Download Notepad++, download the Notepad++ Compare plug-in. 

Download both configurations into a text file and use Notepad++ with the Compare plug-in to compare the differences.

[Scott Fella]

So many options... one on windows and mac I use is meld to run diffs.  Just make sure you know what you need to change.

[Valkyrie3]

Apologies it's taken a while to get back on this, I was finally able to get the config files synchronised and uploaded which has worked fine so the secondary controller is now working the same as the first.

I hadn't come across the Notepad++ compare option before and that was particularly helpful in sorting out the config for the secondary controller, thanks for the suggestion.