PAK LIcenses on Cisco 5508 WLC

[jvasilko]

I have a 5508 controller where the GUI says that there are 400 AP licenses loaded on the Monitor page.  When I go to Management>Licenses, it shows that I have a 500 AP count license that is active.  CLI confirms this AP count.  How do I get those other 100 AP licenses to show up as the controller is currently limiting me to the 400.

[Ric.Beeching.Education]

From your CLI can you paste the following outputs:

show license capacity

show license expiring

show license detail

show license all

They should give similar outputs but trying to get a whole picture. Are you using the evaluation license or a purchased one? What version of software?

Ric

[jvasilko]

Version is 8.0.121.0

(Cisco Controller) >show license expiring

This is a Controller with HA-SKU license.
                                         The AP base count license was inherited from the Primary Controller.

                                                                                                             Any AP base count license on HA-SKU controller is disregarded.

Licensed Feature    Max Count         Current Count     Remaining Count
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
AP Count            400               399               1

(Cisco Controller) >

(Cisco Controller) >show license all

This is a Controller with HA-SKU license.
                                         The AP base count license was inherited from the Primary Controller.

                                                                                                             Any AP base count license on HA-SKU controller is disregarded.


         License Store: Primary License Storage
         StoreIndex: 0
         Feature Name: base
         Feature Version: 1.0
         License type: Permanent
         License state: Active, Not in Use
         License Count: Not Counted
         License Priority: Medium

         License Store: Primary License Storage
         StoreIndex: 0
         Feature Name: base-ap-count
         Feature Version: 1.0
         License type: Permanent
         License state: Active, In Use

--More-- or (q)uit
         License Count: 500 / 500 (Active/In-Use)
         License Priority: Medium

(Cisco Controller) >show license detail base-ap-count

This is a Controller with HA-SKU license.
                                         The AP base count license was inherited from the Primary Controller.

                                                                                                             Any AP base count license on HA-SKU controller is disregarded.


         License Store: Primary License Storage
         StoreIndex: 0
         Feature Name: base-ap-count
         Feature Version: 1.0
         License type: Permanent
         License state: Active, In Use
         License Count: 500 / 500 (Active/In-Use)
         License Priority: Medium

[Ric Beeching]

Ok so the logs indicate the WLC is specifically for  HA (High Availability), do you know if you are supposed to have a primary and secondary WLC? Can you also do the following:

show inventory

show sysinfo

show redundancy summary

Depending on the serial/SKU of the WLC you may find it tricky to increase your licenses as the WLCs intended use is to be a backup in the event your primary WLC fails.

Ric

[jvasilko]

Ric.....The way I understand it at this site, the devices were supposed to be purchased as a WLC and an HA unit.

Burned-in MAC Address............................ A4:93:4C:B0:B4:60
Power Supply 1................................... Present, OK
Power Supply 2................................... Absent
Maximum number of APs supported.................. 500
NAME: "Chassis"    , DESCR: "Cisco 5500 Series Wireless LAN Controller"
PID: AIR-CT5508-K9,  VID: V02,  SN: FCW1628L0D2

(Cisco Controller) >show sys?
sysinfo        syslog         system
(Cisco Controller) >show sysinfo

Manufacturer's Name.............................. Cisco Systems Inc.
Product Name..................................... Cisco Controller
Product Version.................................. 8.0.121.0
Bootloader Version............................... 1.0.1
Field Recovery Image Version..................... 6.0.182.0
Firmware Version................................. FPGA 1.3, Env 1.6, USB console 1.27
Build Type....................................... DATA + WPS

System Name...................................... nl005-w-ua-CSCbldg-05
System Location.................................. NL005_Terneuzen
System Contact................................... NSD
System ObjectID.................................. 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.1.1069
Redundancy Mode.................................. SSO
IP Address....................................... 10.34.1.20
IPv6 Address..................................... ::
Last Reset....................................... Software reset
System Up Time................................... 84 days 20 hrs 43 mins 8 secs
System Timezone Location......................... (GMT +1:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Vienna
System Stats Realtime Interval................... 5
System Stats Normal Interval..................... 180

Configured Country............................... NL  - Netherlands

--More-- or (q)uit
Operating Environment............................ Commercial (0 to 40 C)
Internal Temp Alarm Limits....................... 0 to 65 C
Internal Temperature............................. +33 C
External Temperature............................. +22 C
Fan Status....................................... OK

State of 802.11b Network......................... Enabled
State of 802.11a Network......................... Enabled
Number of WLANs.................................. 3
Number of Active Clients......................... 1436

Burned-in MAC Address............................ A4:93:4C:B0:B4:60
Power Supply 1................................... Present, OK
Power Supply 2................................... Absent
Maximum number of APs supported.................. 500
System Nas-Id.................................... nl005-w-ua-CSCbldg-05
WLC MIC Certificate Types........................ SHA1

(Cisco Controller) >show redundancy summ
            Redundancy Mode = SSO ENABLED
                Local State = ACTIVE
                 Peer State = STANDBY HOT
                       Unit = Secondary (Inherited AP License Count = 400)
                    Unit ID = A4:93:4C:B0:B4:60
           Redundancy State = SSO
               Mobility MAC = 04:62:73:51:8C:E0
            BulkSync Status = Complete
Average Redundancy Peer Reachability Latency = 448 Micro Seconds
Average Management Gateway Reachability Latency = 1119 Micro Seconds

[Ric Beeching]

Are these WLCs in physically separate locations? The latency seems very high.

The secondary unit is active for whatever reason and has inherited the license from the primary. You'll need to force a failover back to the primary to fix up the first issue (it appears to be in standby hot mode).

The second thing is then purchasing and applying an additional 100 licenses to the primary unit unless you have an enterprise agreement or something that covers you up to 500? 

In more recent codes (8.2+ I think) you can specify Right To Use (RTU) licensing without uploading a license file but in theory you are supposed to have purchased them!

Ric 

[jvasilko]

They should be connected together with an HA cable, so they are in the same room.  I have a 100 count license ready to load, but I was not able to since it thinks I have 500.  Our customer has plenty of purchased licenses on file at Cisco Software Center, so I am not too worried about that.

I am not sure I understand the issue about the primary and secondary unit.  If in HA mode, should they not use the same license counts no matter which one is the current active WLC?  Then you're saying that by putting the other device into primary, the 500 licenses will magically show up?

[Ric Beeching]

No with your setup the secondary unit is designed to inherit whatever the primary unit has on it and won't retain its own licenses.

In the event of a failover for whatever reason the secondary unit will still keep everything going as per usual but some functionality is restricted.

Your primary unit is showing as hot standby so depending on what services are running you should be good to fail back to the primary and upload/apply the license file. 

Ric

[Ric Beeching]

To clarify, your secondary unit is active and that needs to be failed 'back' to the primary before you can do much else.

I had a look on some WLCs I have setup with HA SSO and the stats are more in what I'd expect to see although 440 for the management gateway isn't brilliant. These are directly connected on the RP port via UTP and then 10G fibre to the access layer on the management port.

Average Redundancy Peer Reachability Latency = 106 Micro Seconds
Average Management Gateway Reachability Latency = 440 Micro Seconds

This document should help clarify some thingsregarding HA SSO.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/technotes/7-5/High_Availability_DG.pdf

A final note is your FUS is quite low (6.0.x) and Cisco usually recommend bringing that up to date... the upgrade process with HA SSO isn't particularly clean (requires long outages per unit) so will need planning if you do proceed with that. The number I've stated there doesn't correspond with what you can download (classic Cisco). The releases are here but with yours being quite old you may need to engage TAC for support and advice first.

https://software.cisco.com/download/release.html?mdfid=282600534&softwareid=284364857&release=1.9.0.0&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=latest

[jvasilko]

Ric....I don't recall with these devices, but is there a loss of connectivity for users when there is a failover?  I am hoping no as this is what the HA setup was supposed to eliminate, but I am always cautious when assuming what is going to happens with these devices.

[Ric Beeching]

With full client/ap sso, which I think you have then, I believe there is no outage to services at all assuming you're not reliant upon rogue/wips/ information as those lists aren't synched and are re-learnt upon cutover.

I don't know your environment well enough to categorically state it will be a seamless failover I'm afraid!

Ric