Migration path help from Cisco Mobility Express

[jmprats]

Hi, I have a wireless network with 30 AP's with Mobility Express. Mixing AP's 1830, 1850, 3800, 9115 and 9120

Cisco just announced the EoL of AP 1830 and 1850, with and End of maintenance of May 1, 2023 (just here!!!).

The mobility express controller is a AP 3800 with and End of maintenance of May 1, 2024.

So I need to replace to replace 15 AP's 1830 and 1850 quickly and the 3800 Mobility Express Controller.

Moreover Mobility Express and AireOs is legacy and it seems is going to disappear with those AP's.

I was thinking in buying 9115's and migrate all the wifi to EWC. But it seems there is no much future for EWC because is not going to support Wifi 6E.

What actions and migration path do you recommend?

Thank you

[marce1000]

 - You also need to take into account , that the maximum number of supported access points is 100 for EWC , next thing to look at could be 9800-VM solutions and or further up the ladder the physical appliances.

 M.

[jmprats]

Thank you for your time.

The EWC limit of 100 access point is not a problem. I am in 30 now.

My doubt is that it seems EWC is not a long term solution as it is announced is not going to support wifi 6E. The new wifi 6E AP's are not supported in EWC but they are support incontroller solutions and in cloud-Meraki solutions.

So what AP's do I have to buy to replace my 1830's and 1850's? 

Thanks

[marce1000]

 - FYI : https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/wireless/access-point-controller-selector.html

 M.

[jmprats]

Yes, i know. But looking to the future. Where I am going? Mobility Express and EWC seems are going to be legacy products (not 6E support). Do I have to go to cloud-Meraki solution or to a controller solution? I am talking of a maximum of 50 AP's (30 at the moment)

[SeppelM]

Any solution?

I want also to migrate from Mobility Express to EWLC of the 9115 AP but Cisco has no migration guide for this. The config converter is a joke because ME is not supported and if you convert you will loose most of your settings.

[jmprats]

No, I think do you need to migrate manually. And first of all doing a lot of testing with EWC because it is a very different philosophy and more complicated. The problem pushing small deployment to Meraki is that all my AX AP's are not compatible with Meraki. You need to begin from scratch losing all your inversion. In that case it can make sense looking for another platforms

[SeppelM]

Hi, yes, maybe the 9800 virtual appliance is an alternative because it supports all APs. Of course you need licenses but if you take Meraki you also need licenses and it is not "on prem".

The politics of cisco is not very cool. There are lots of small deployments which are not allowed to run on cloud deployments.

[jmprats]

It seems that EWC won't support Wifi 6E, so I guess in the end 9800 virtual appliance can be a solution as you mention, even if it's not the most desired for small deployments

[Scott Fella]

The 9800-CL is fine for small deployments, I use it and have tested with it on ESXi, hyper-V and in Azure. I also run in my home lab with 7-8 access points a pair 9800-L-C and a pair of 9800-CL and I switch between the two. I also run FlexConnect in both setups. In my work environment, I also run the 9800-CL in Azure and also have ESXi and Hyper-V for testing.

[Scott Fella]

The 9800-CL is available in Azure, AWS, etc and you can run that with small environments. When you migrate to the 91xx access points you buy the license on the AP’s. The 9800’s don’t support all access points so you will need to review the WLC matrix guide.

So it really does depend on what type of deployment you need also knowing the limitations like max ap count (flex connect) when using the 9800-CL on a VM or cloud. If you want on-prem or cloud, local can FlexConnect, EWC vs small 9800-L controllers.

The 9166 is an access point that can be used with the 9800’s or Meraki, so again, you have some options.

As far as migration, I don’t use the converter tool 100%. I typically build from scratch because of what was working and not working. Plus there are always things that you want that is not in your previous design.

[Arshad Safrulla · Accepted solution]

As of today, none of EWC WLCs (even with latest code) support 6E capable APs. As I was told by Cisco SE that Cisco is pushing an approach where all the small non-complex sites move ahead with Meraki and the other who need granular control and deploy large scale to go ahead with WLCs. 

As of today, Cisco provide 9800-CL appliance free of cost where we have to pay only for the support (of course compute and storage needs to be provided by customer). 9800-CL is available in almost all the public cloud platforms and private cloud platforms.

If you prefer the physical appliance, you may explore the 9800 WLCs listed in Cisco site. 9800-L is best choice for your network. Please note that if you are moving to any 9800 appliances (physical or virtual) you need AIR-DNA licenses for the APs (per AP one license).

[SeppelM]

Do I also need DNA Center as I don't have it at the moment. Or do I need only the AIR-DNA licenses to connect the APs to the controller? I suppose that the setup will be more complicated for just a few APs.

[Scott Fella]

You don't need DNA Center, but you do have to purchase the DNA license initially, so just do a 1 year.  Later you can add the DNA license if you plan on getting DNAc.  The opt-out for DNA license is for use with AireOS controllers.