Using Cisco vWLCs with more than 200 APs

[leitwerk_smartnet]

Hello everyone,

I plan to deploy about 250 APs in our office. If possible I want to use the vWLC because of its low price compared to a hardware WLC. Since the vWLC is ristricted to max. 200 APs, I am thinkink about to use two vWLCs and put them together in one mobility group. This way I can join 200 APs to vWLC#1 and join the remaining APs to vWLC#2. As far as I understand the mobility group feature is made exactly for this purpose (but I'm not sure).

Can anyone please tell if this is a recommended design or if there is a better solution to accomplish this?

Regards

Benjamin

[Matthew Peterman]

I would have a hard time calling that a recommended solution - while it could work if you are dealing with 250 APs, certainly the recommended solution is to use a hardware controller - at least I would. To get a 5508 with 250 AP licenses it would cost you no more than $150 per AP and having a controller is a huge benefit IMO. If the business is big enough to need 250 APs, I'd think it would be big enough to have a hardware controler (or 2 or 3). 

[Scott Fella]

I agree with Matthew.... recommended design means you know what your requirements are as far as features and then you need to figure out if the vWLC fits that design or not.  I too will avoid the vWLC because it doesn't fit in most of the designs to meet the customers requirements.  You need to understand the technology so you can decide if a vWLC is what you need or should I say can use, or if a appliance is what you really need to invest in.

-Scott

[leitwerk_smartnet]

Hello Scott, Hello Matthew,

the vWLC will fit all our requirements beside the 200 AP limit. I also have some vWLC deploymnets in the field and so far it does it's job as good as the hardware WLC. Nothing to complain about that. Of course you have to know the limitations of the vWLC (e.g. no DHCP-Server, etc.).

The vWLC solution is meant for one of our customers. They've got offers from different vendors for their wireless LAN rollout and the Cisco Wlan solution is by far more expensive than the others when it comes to hardware and license costs. That's why I want to use the vWLC, to cut costs. I just wonder if the vWLC is not meant to be used in larger environments at all or if it is just not such a commen product, so that there are not many people have experience with such deployments.

Regards
Benjamin

[Matthew Peterman]

Certainly the target market of the vWLC is for the small and mid-business sector where the hardware-based controllers can be cost prohibitive. Thats not to say that the vWLC can't be used in larger environments, but it isn't designed to do so. Features like seamless failover for clients and APs can't be implemented in the vWLC, analytics are made much more difficult because all traffic isn't tunneled through the WLC. 

Honestly I don't know much more about the vWLC, but from everyone I have talked to, any wireless deployment over anywhere from 12-25 APs probably should start looking for a controller based architecture, and certainly anything over 50 would likely benefit from a hardware controller. I haven't seen specific pricing, but I imagine you can get a 5508 with 250 AP licenses for ~$30,000 which comes out to $120 per AP - not far from the vWLC. 

I can't speak to what this network is being used for, but the company I work for has tons of branch locations, and even the locations that have as few at 8 APs have dual 5508s even though each location has severs with vSphere. There has to be some reason to have the hardware controllers by the time you get to 250 APs. 

Scott certainly has more experience in the area, so take his opinion with more weight than mine.