Redundant Controller at a remote site

[robinwenham]

We are implementing a number of WLCs at different sites that are connected by a WAN (site-to-site links). I'd like to use the WLC at site A as the backup WLC for site B and that at site B as the backup for site A.

I've reviewed the documents that I can find on Cisco and the threads in this forum, but haven't found a definitive guide yet - maybe I haven't recognised it.

Can anyone point me in the right direction or provide configuration advice?

Thanks in advance

[Scott Fella]

The only issues with doing that is the fact that the ap's at remote A will obtain the configurations from remote B when wlc A fails. So that means that the users will associate to an ssid and be tunneled back to the other remote site and access the network from there. If this doesn't work for you then maybe having redundant wlc's at each remote site is a better option. One other thing is to configure the ap's in h-reap mode and have all the wlc's centrally located.

[robinwenham]

Yes, we thought about the problems with clients on site A "appearing" on site B's network, complete with site B IP address. This wouldn't be a big issue, I suppose, but would I be better off just using H-REAP for every AP regardless? Then they would get the IP address for the site where the AP was located, regardless of where the controller was?

I forgot to add that the SSIDs of the WLANs are the same at each site.

[Scott Fella]

As long as you have the wlan ssid set to local switching then you will be good to go. All you have to do is create the ssid which will be the same for both sites and then on the ap, you will set the local vlan id.

[robinwenham]

"As long as you have the wlan ssid set to local switching" - do I do this with H-REAP? Or is there something that I have missed?

Thanks

[Scott Fella]

You enable this on the wlan and then on the ap h-reap configuration you assign the native vlan support and then apply then set the vlan mapping for the local switched wlan. H-REAP ap will be connected to a trunk port if you wish to have management on a seperate vlan than the wlan. Also if you have more than one wlan vlan locally switched.