vWLC with Trunk port

[mmaamm238]

Hi,

I have a working vWLC with 5 APs and all of them are in one VLAN and SSID.

Now I want to add another SSID and VLAN. I changed the switch ports that connect to APs from access to trunk with native VLAN that is previous access VLAN. I created another dynamic interface with new VLAN tag in vWLC and assigned it to the new SSID. I created a new portgroup in VMware for trunk with promiscuous mode is accept. But when I changed the the vWLC port to the new trunk portgroup and assigned the management interface a VLAN tag everything disconnected even default route on service port does not work while I did not touch service port!

What should I do?

ESXi version: 8

vWLC version: 8.10.196.0

[Saikat Nandy]

You can consider moving to flex setup. That will be an easy solution for your requirement. Keep the APs in trunk mode. Create Flex group with AP native vlan and wlan-vlan mapping.

[mmaamm238]

Dear Saikat,

I already configured the AP Modes to FlexConnect. Does vWLC support any other mode?

Sincerely,

[Saikat Nandy]

From AP mode perspective, vWLC supports only flex mode. But despite if keeping AP in flex mode, you can still do flexconnect central switching - however that comes with a limitation which is 'FlexConnect central switching is supported in only small-scale deployments, wherein the total traffic on controller ports is not more than 500 Mbps.'

Now when you said, you created an another dynamic interface on WLC, I reckon you are trying to do central switching. So instead of that, move to flexconnect local switching (provided you have vlan availability on the AP switchport). That will remove the dependency from your controller side.

[mmaamm238]

Dear Saikat,

Thank you for your help. I am using local switching. I was wrongly thinking dynamic interface is required on both central and local switching but as you said it it is not required for local switching, I removed vWLC dynamic interface and changed the WLAN interface to the management interface.

What configuration is required for DHCP on WLC or nothing? (For example DHCP Proxy or management interface DHCP server)

Regards

[Saikat Nandy]

You don't need any DHCP related config on the controller side when it is flex local switching (we do have a central DHCP option but don't think you are using that one, seen rarely customers using that). You just need flexconnect config with correct wlan-vlan mapping. Make sure AP switchport is having correct vlan allowed under trunk. The DHCP config needs to be present on the remote site core switch or svi with ip helper.