WLC migration from 5508 to 9800, rolling upgrade and licensing

[sirajuddeen t p]

Dear support team,
This topic is in continuation of the the below discussion.

Solved: AP staged upgrade WLC 9800 - Cisco Community

My customer bit concerned about the migration due to their 24/7 factory operation and want to know every aspect of the migration and operation.

I have three more queries with respect to the WLC 5508 to 9800 migration and operation.

1. Can we manual group of the APs depends on the customer requirement for Patching and Rolling
AP Upgrade. I referred below but not 100% sure about the custom grouping.

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/17-3/deployment-guide/c9800-ha-rau-apsp-apdp-issu-dg-rel-17-3.pdf

2. The existing WLC is on SSO mode and new setup will be based on N+1 based on Cisco expert community suggestions.
Can we use WLC Config Converter from SSO (5508) to N+1 (9800) migration?

3. Due to security reason, customer would like to have offline license enforcement. In such a case do we need license on the standby unity? Any impact on operation/upgrade, failover without license on standby?

Thank you in advance.

[marce1000]

  >...2. The existing WLC is on SSO mode and new setup will be based on N+1 based on Cisco expert community suggestions.
Can we use WLC Config Converter from SSO (5508) to N+1 (9800) migration?
     -  You can just use the config converter, the N+1 situation does not matter here because the +1 controller just needs to have a similar configuration. 

  >3. Due to security reason, customer would like to have offline license enforcement. In such a case do we need license on the standby unity? Any impact on operation/upgrade, failover without license on standby?
                      On N+1 setups the standby needs the licenses installed too , 

   Some useful info's : https://www.ciscolive.com/on-demand/on-demand-library.html?search=9800&search=9800#/session/1670019633770001nscj
       On 9800 you can always have a checkup/review of the controller configuration with the CLI command  show tech wireless , have the output analyzed with : https://cway.cisco.com/wireless-config-analyzer , it is strongly advised to do that before production release for instance, 

 M.

[sirajuddeen t p]

Thanks @marce1000 .

>>-- 2: a sub question. If the customer plan to use smart software manager (on-prem). Would it still require same AP count license on standby?

>>--3: Clear.

[marce1000]

 - In case of N+1    I would say yes , because there could be a case that it has to serve all the access points ,

 M.

[Rich R]

Well actually with smart licensing on 9800 you do not use RTU license or "AP count license" like on AireOS - the WLC requests an AP DNA license for each AP which joins the WLC.  Since an AP can only be joined to 1 WLC you need 1 DNA license per AP.  Whichever WLC the AP joins will request the AP license from smart licensing.

Use on-prem server at your own risk - we abandoned it, with our security team approval, due to multiple issues with it.  The on-prem server lags 6 months to a year behind for new features compared to the on-line version (so can cause severe delays to product deployment).  I'd highly recommend using a secure method (eg proxy) to access the Cisco CSSM directly rather than on-prem.

[Leo Laohoo]

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@sirajuddeen t p wrote:
1. Can we manual group of the APs depends on the customer requirement for Patching and Rolling AP Upgrade. I referred below but not 100% sure about the custom grouping.

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Yes and no.  

This is highly dependent on how "dense" are the APs deployed, if the WLC has a redundant pair (mobility tunnel) and the current version of the code. 

We tested "Enable Hitless Upgrade" during business hours (>300 wireless clients) and nobody noticed the outage.  

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@sirajuddeen t p wrote:
2. The existing WLC is on SSO mode and new setup will be based on N+1 based on Cisco expert community suggestions.
Can we use WLC Config Converter from SSO (5508) to N+1 (9800) migration?

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When we "converted" our config, there were a lot of missing or incompatible lines.  We ended up manually configuring the 9800 from scratch.

[sirajuddeen t p]

Thank you @Leo Laohoo and @marce1000