Aruba WAP Controller advise

[.N.]

Hi,

 

So I'm inheriting (work) circa ~150 wireless access points.  They happen to be a mix of Aruba 105, 115 and 215 model devices - all of them have been installed and set in good positions for the branches (yay) - however, one kicker - i'm not inheriting the controller server nor its configuration.

 

The question is - i'm aware i've got some options but am keen to here some thoughts/advise/words of wisdom from those who may have played with these AP's before (rest of my domain is a cisco world so you can guess the advise they're giving ).

 

basically i'm happy to stand up a controller for these -it's more should I:

 

A) - spin something up and manage the tin myself?

B) - Aruba/HP - cloud services (basically IaaS for them) - anyone used this keen to hear about it.

C) - stand alone mode locally on each branch and leave them running that way?

 

I'm sure i've forgotten some key points but you get the idea - load of AP's, competing brand to what i'm used to, and cost involved any of the above ways.

 

thanks in advance to anyone reading/replying/providing advise

 

.N.

[Lurick]

Well as a Cisco employee I think you should clearly replace them all with Cisco gear

 

Depending on the spread of APs, I would do standalone on the branches and if you have like a campus or two with a lot of APs in one location, spin up something yourself on bare metal and manage those with that.

[.N.]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

Well as a Cisco employee I think you should clearly replace them all with Cisco gear

 

Depending on the spread of APs, I would do standalone on the branches and if you have like a campus or two with a lot of APs in one location, spin up something yourself on bare metal and manage those with that.

haha yes the Cisco employee party line I heard all too well when i called our business development manager...the capex spend just couldn't be justified at this early stage (the 150 AP's are over 12 sites so not huge volumes but a few thousand miles between me and them to easily monitor).

 

noted 1 vote for stand alone mode. thanks

[Levisallanon]

Sounds more like a risk assessment to me. You could present the solutions to management.
If you decide to just leave them in stand alone mode, if something breaks it could mean a downtime of a couple of days (because you first need to get there probably).
If yo decide to spin up a new control server it could mean a lot of invested resources but when something does break you have better control over it so you should be able to decrease the downtime significantly.
The IaaS (wouldn't it be a SaaS solution?) solution is probably the most expensive option and would not give any benefits over the first option. Personally I would only chose the IaaS option if you don't have the hardware required to spin up a controller or if you for some reason expect the hardware to fail and you really need a 100% uptime guarantee on the controller.

 

oh and

 

No Cisco employee here but I did hear some of their gospel already, and ofcourse I would also say you should just replace it all if you have the option :P.

[brwainer]

We use Aruba 7005 controllers at work, except as gateways (manage user logins and authentication at venues like hotels and restaurants) with no Aruba APs attached at all. Basically if you apply the licence for firewall functionality to it, then it becomes the most cost effective gateway that is Hilton StayConnected and Mariott GPNS approved (the other main option is Nomadix). I can tell you that if you use this controller, its GUI is passable but you better learn the CLI too. At least the GUI is better than the Extreme Networks controller - that one deserves to be set on fire.

 

Anyway, we never actually install Aruba APs so I don’t have experience with using the controller for its intended purpose.

[.N.]

So update have bitten the bullet forked our the near 9k NZ for a controller...4 week lead time!!! Then I have to licence the WAP’s like what the! Don’t get me wrong I got them for free pretty much but licences for the AP’s that’s a bit rough given I’ve grabbed a propriety controller running Aruba *strikethat* HP switch’s kinda of a bit cheeky. (As I investigate fortigate for the rest of the business).  Why can’t it be a simple server licence with a fixed capacity and just a annual maintanence fee for the firmware/patches etc (not a per WAP cost) I dunno.  Rant over.  4 weeks to go until i can explore the controller and see if it’s truly worth the cost.

 

sorry HP employees reading this thread - but fair to say the outlay to use this gear without much of a reason as to why it’s worth all the ongoing costs...call me wary.

 

however please prove me wrong

[brwainer]

1 hour ago, .N. said:

So update have bitten the bullet forked our the near 9k NZ for a controller...4 week lead time!!! Then I have to licence the WAP’s like what the! Don’t get me wrong I got them for free pretty much but licences for the AP’s that’s a bit rough given I’ve grabbed a propriety controller running Aruba *strikethat* HP switch’s kinda of a bit cheeky. (As I investigate fortigate for the rest of the business).  Why can’t it be a simple server licence with a fixed capacity and just a annual maintanence fee for the firmware/patches etc (not a per WAP cost) I dunno.  Rant over.  4 weeks to go until i can explore the controller and see if it’s truly worth the cost.

 

sorry HP employees reading this thread - but fair to say the outlay to use this gear without much of a reason as to why it’s worth all the ongoing costs...call me wary.

 

however please prove me wrong

If you got an Aruba 7000 series controller, e.g. a 7005, the last digit is the number of APs it can control without additional licenses. Having licenses per-AP when on a controller is standard in the enterprise AP market - Ruckus, Extreme, Cisco, Meraki (sort-of Cisco but they did it pre-acquisition too) all have per-AP licensing for their controllers. The idea is this:

• The cost of the AP is for the hardware and for the software that runs in standalone mode
• The cost of the controller is purely for its hardware
• the cost of the licenses is for the software that the APs run in controller mode

Does that seem like double dipping? Hell yeah, but its something you can expect woth enterprise IT equipment.

 

Edit: 9000 NZD is about $6,500 USD - what the hell controller did you buy? The 7005 is like $1300-$1500.

 

EDIT2: I just reread your initial post, things make more sense now. I thought we were talking about a small number of APs. Also, even if you aren’t inheriting the controller, I feel like you should inherit the licenses - although technically they are bojnd to the controller to service X number of APs, not to each AP.

[brwainer]

2 hours ago, brwainer said:

If you got an Aruba 7000 series controller, e.g. a 7005, the last digit is the number of APs it can control without additional licenses.

I just remembered that this is the case for Ruckus ZoneDirector, e.g. ZD1205. I don’t know if this is true for Aruba controllers - I’m probably wrong there