Migrating APs from 7510 to 9800CL

[molter]

We currently have two 7510 controllers in HA running 8.5.161.1 with almost 1800 APs. The majority of the APs are 2702I and 1852I. There are also some 3702E and 3802E. I need to migrate the APs to a 9800CL controller that is running 17.3.4c.

It doesn't look like I can setup a mobility group with the two controllers. I'm looking for ideas on how to do the migration.

Thanks in advance.

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

You first step is to make sure that all your ap's are supported on the IOS-XE version you plan to run.  You can look here for reference.  You also probably saw the following:

• The IRCM feature is not supported on the following Cisco AireOS Wireless Controllers:

  • Cisco 2504 Wireless Controllers

  • Cisco Flex7510 Wireless Controllers

  • Cisco WiSM 2 Controllers

  • Cisco Virtual Wireless Controllers (vWLCs)

So what you most likely need to do is change the ap high availability to point to the new controller.  Now since you can't setup mobility, you need to plan this out, where you do a section at a time or maybe move all ap's at a site to the new controller.  This is up to you to determine since you know your environment more than we would.  

Of course, you want to test moving one or a few access points and making sure everything is working as far as SSID's, authentication, etc.  Then come up with a plan to determine how you want to move forward.

[molter]

thank you Scott. This sounds like a good approach. I will bring up some test APs on the 7510 and try this.

[Scott Fella]

I was in the same boat as you.  I have 5508's and also 2504/5520's in my lab.  What I ended up doing is building the 9800 how I needed it and then building out the WLAN's.  this way I'm reviewing the configurations and seeing what I need to enable and what I don't need enabled.  Then I just test with a bunch of devices and make sure everything is working and also with radius and tacacs.  This way, I'm comfortable when I move sites to the new controller.  I didn't or do I use the config convertor as it seems to be more of an issue than building it from scratch.  

[Prince.O]

To add on, since this is a large deployment of Aps, if you have prime infrastructure in your environment , you can leverage that to push the high availability change to multiple Aps via template once you validate the first few Aps can join the controller fine

Example link for pushing the template to Aps via prime below:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/net_mgmt/prime/infrastructure/3-0/user/guide/pi_ug/config-temp.html#31489

[Scott Fella]

You can also script the change by pushing the commands from the controller cli.

[molter]

We do have Prime and I can see how I could easily make a template and save myself a great deal of work. Thank you.

[Arshad Safrulla]

As you are aware lack of mobility tunnel will result is no seamless roaming between controllers (All client roaming between AireOS WLC &  9800 are L3 roaming). You may use configuration converter to convert your config from 7510 to 9800, more info below.

WLC Config Converter (AireOS, IOS-XE) - Cisco Community

I personally recommend to the start the configuration from the scratch as the platforms are completely different, best practices and limitations comes in to play. Config converter does a great job in covering most of it, but still worth to manually verify it after configuration. 

Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Configuration Best Practices - Cisco

Also you can run it through the config analyzer

Wireless Config Analyzer (cisco.com)

Migration plan must be very simple considering your hardware, migrate one roaming domain at a given time. (Roaming domain = one floor, one building etc. where clients can roam between AP's without disconnecting). It is also recommended that you use different VLAN's for SSID's if centrally switched to avoid ARP issues. If you have Flex AP's make sure that you don't assign the same site tag for more than 100AP's.

If you have AP's with external high gain antenna configure the antenna gain as required. As You can write filters based on the AP hostname or base MAC to auto assign policies when it joins for the first time. 

As @Scott Fella suggested make sure that you create use cases for all possible scenarios and test it before the migration. 

For moving the AP's between WLC's my personal preference is to create a new dhcp scope and set the dhcp options under them pointing to new WLC. But in scenarios where this is not possible I use AireOS cli to grab the AP names registered per AP group and then script it using CLI as working in GUI is too slow for me.

capwap ap primary-base HHHHH X.X.X.X.

Last option is if Prime is in use, you can use templates. This is the easiest provided that you have PRIME in your infra.

[molter]

Thanks Arshad, I think I will run the convertor, download the file and review. My thought was to paste some the sections into the 9800 config.