old 3702s on 5508 WLC -> moving to 9800 WLC

[williamsonjason]

Im hoping someone has an answer for this. 

We have an existing 5500/3702e setup, and the 3702 is supported by my new c9800 WLCs. For some reason, all existing APs were "primed" via console cable and static IP address. No idea why, but it's what I inherited. A new out-of-the-box 3702 that was configured via console works fine on the new 9800 WLC - but Im having trouble swinging the existing production 3702s over to the new 9800 WLC. 

I'm using the High Availability tab inside the AP's GUI on the controller & replacing the hostname and IP with the new WLC's info. Tell the AP to reboot, and it comes right back to the old controller. 

Any Advice?

Oh, and for some reason someone turned off SSH to the APs, and I'm unsure how to turn that back on as well. 

thanks in advance, yall

[Scott Fella]

You can enable ssh to the ap’s from the controller. You can also factory restore the aps from the controller. It seems like you need to do some testing to figure out what you need to do. If a factory reset works, then that is what you need to do. Try some things and let us know.

[Scott Fella]

Just search around but for AireOS you can issue the following: config ap ssh enable all

[williamsonjason]

Thanks Scott. I did get that figured out last night. Helped a bit, but dang if these old APs simply will not move to the new WLCs!

I effectively wipe OUT the old WLC from their HA tab, and only put in the new WLC as primary & the dang things won't move. Im stuck now...

Maybe I might naad to upgrade the old environment from 8.5.171 to a newer 8.10 code & then they might? Looking for confirmation if at all possible. 

[ammahend]

I had this issue migrating 3700s from 8540 to 9800, although they were not primed individually like yours so it wasn't as bad,  it took us 4-5 reboot every time before 3700 APs moved to new controller, we could not even shutdown old controller port because we were migrating one location at a time, so we ended up applying an ACL on AP management SVI to block old controller IP one migration site at a time and eventually the APs joined 9800 still took good 15-20 minutes. Other APs like 3800s joined in no time.

[williamsonjason]

Do you know what code version your 3800s were, when they migrated to easily?

[ammahend]

This was couple of years so, I want to say controller was on 8.5.161 .. I remember for 9800, 17.4 code was recommended at the time, and Cisco had to give us a special engineering image to keep supporting 3700.

[Rich R]

Yes you should upgrade to 8.5.182.11 (link below) before moving the APs.  Otherwise you're going to get hit by one or more of the field notices below which will prevent the APs from moving.  5508 is not supported on 8.10.

And make sure the 9800 code version you're using is up to date as per the TAC recommended link below.