Mobility Express To 9800 Wireless LAN Controller

[dcgtechnologies]

Hello,

I am new to the Cisco Self Standing Wireless LAN Controller System. I have always used Mobility Express, and I know it is end of life. The purpose of this AP is for learning and using it in my home lab. I have read this post below:

Migrate ME to C9800 - Cisco Community

I want to know how hard it is to migrate an Aironet 3802 using Mobility Express to a 9800 Series Wireless LAN Controller. Is using the Mobility Express Migration Wizard that simple? I mean if it is that easy then this should be a piece of cake, but nothing ever is easy with technology, and I know there are tweaks that might need to be made. I am going to be installing in its place a 9178i and this AP only works with capwap so I need the Wireless LAN Controller, and I am very inexperienced with it and I have done a bunch of reading, but still a little cloudy on this new technology. Does anyone have a good go to site on how the setup is and ease of use? Thank you.

[dcgtechnologies]

@Mark Elsen You are a rockstar! That was the issue. I had "promiscuous mode" set correctly before I originally wiped the Network configurations off of each host to reconfigure each host for setting up the new VLAN networks / configurations on each of the hosts. I also set "Forced Transmits" To "Accept" as well as I remember that was a part of the configuration. I am happy to say that my SVI VLAN's are both Admin and Operational "Up" and "Up". See screenshot below:

What is your recommendation for Vlan1? Can I shut it down? Now I can move on with my setup and configuration. I hope things go smoother. Thank you again Mark!

[Mark Elsen]

  - @dcgtechnologies      Glad to see you made progress, leave Vlan 1 as it it, do not shut it down.
                                       Proceed with the setup according to guidelines from ; 
                                              https://www.ciscolive.com/c/dam/r/ciscolive/global-event/docs/2024/pdf/BRKEWN-2094.pdf

   M.

[Rich R]

That's because G1 is supposed to be the service port!
Refer: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/technical-reference/c9800-cl-dg.html#Configuringthe9800CL

Step 4.          Add an IP address on the device management interface. The example assumes GigabitEthernet1 is mapped to the out-of-band/device management network during VM bootstrap:

C9800(config)# interface GigabitEthernet1

C9800(config-if)# no switchport

C9800(config-if)# ip address <Management IP> <Management Subnet>

Step 5.          Add the route to the remote network from which the 9800-CL will be managed.

C9800(config)# ip route <Remote Network Address> <Remote Network Subnet> <Gateway>

I suggest you start from a clean install and follow the Cisco Deployment Guide.
VLAN 100 on G2 will then be your WMI.  
Remember G1 and G2 are recommended to be on different Vswitches and the G1 port must only be configured for the management VLAN 10 and then VLAN 10 should be excluded on G2.  If the 9800-CL sees the same VLAN traffic on both ports your logs will be flooded with errors because it effectively sees that as a loop in the network.

And just seen your latest reply:
>  I want to use Vlan10 for both management and Service port I guess are the right terms. 
No - that is not recommended because there are a number of things which do not work correctly on 9800-CL when you do that.  Why not just follow the Cisco deployment guide?

[Rich R]

Just a few points:

- Yes ME runs on a cut-down version of AireOS. You can use the converted config as a basic guideline for what a 9800 config would look like but best to build your own from scratch.

- Familiarise yourself with the 9800 config structure:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/config-guide/newconfigmodel/b_catalyst-9800-configuration-model.html
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/catalyst-9800-series-wireless-controllers/213911-understand-catalyst-9800-wireless-contro.html
And Best Practices (link below)

- There are plenty of blogs, guides and videos on how to configure 9800 - just need to search.

- 9178 (WiFi 7 Global Use AP) introduces a number of new concepts for Cisco APs, and WiFi 7 itself - 802.11be - has some new challenges.  Have a good read through:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/access_point/technical-reference/global-use-ap-dg.html
and
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/technical-reference/wpa3-dg.html

- As @Mark Elsen said always use Config Analyzer to check your WLC config with "show tech wireless" output.

[dcgtechnologies]

@Rich R I was working on this before all that VLAN configuration and confusion post. but now I got everything worked out and setup and had a lot of issues with ESXi and now I am at a point where I can resume the 9800 WLC and was doing well and had documentation I was using, but not able to get my VLAN10 to an "Operational Status". It is the OVA Appliance I am using and I do not have a Gi0/1 and only have GigabitEthernet1 and 2. The SVI is showing an up and up status on both admin and operational. So I am stuck on the VLAN10 and getting that up and up. Right now it is Admin "Up" and Operational Status "Down". Refer to my reply to Mark. Thank you.

[dcgtechnologies]

On another note, I am trying to reset the password using the link below:

Recover a Catalyst 9800 Controller from ROMMON Mode - Cisco

I am not able to boot to Rommon or see it in the boot screen. All I see is below:

I am able to perform the steps 1-5, but as soon as I need to boot into ROMMON I am stuck. That is what is what I see in the boot menu. Where is rommon in the boot up screen? I am sorry guys do not mean to be a pain, but this is so frustrating and well I am having zero luck with this along with my Vlan issues. Thank you.

[Rich R]

@dcgtechnologies Why do you need to boot to ROMMON?  Have you completely locked yourself out of the WLC?  Probably quicker for you to just re-deploy the VM from afresh.

Did you solve your VLAN SVI down problem?  If not - back to basics and apologies if I missed it in any of the dozens of updates which I haven't had the chance to read through!

- Did you configure the VLAN before configuring the SVI?  As in:
vlan 100
 name my_vlan100
This is a basic principle of every Cisco box with VLAN/switching capability - you configure the layer 2 VLAN before you configure the  layer 3 SVI on top of it.  VLAN 1 is always configured by default.

[dcgtechnologies]

@Rich R I no longer need that ROMMON help anymore as I got that all sorted.

I did configure Layer 2 first and got the IP address assigned as well made the vrf configuration as well on the Interface Gigabit Ethernet1 and do not have Gi0/1 as I am using the appliance for VMware ESXi. The SVI is configured just fine and has te VLAN100 configured properly and just not able to get VLAN10 up as the Interface GigabitEthernet1 is not a switchport as that is the error I get when I have tried to make it a switchport. The VLAN10 and Vlan100 exist in the SVI configuration tab. Just the VLAN10 is marked as Operational Status is "Down".

Sorry for the repeated statements, but just catching up since I was not on this post for a while. Thank you Rich.

[dcgtechnologies]

Sorry all I have not been able to work on the 9800 WLC lately due to personal issues, but I plan on resuming it very soon. Please keep this post alive. Thank you all!