WLC Upgrade & AP

[fromthesky]

Hi all,

i'm going to upgrade a pair of WLC with a very old software image. Since this situation requires several intermediate upgrades, I was wondering if I can disable the distribution ports at the begining of the upgrade and then enable them at the end, in order to upgrade the access point just once. Can this procedure create some trouble?

[ericgarnel]

Not sure,

Since you are essentially disabling wireless anyway by disabling the distr ports, you might as well not disable the ports.

keep in mind a few things:

The new image will not take effect until reboot; therefore it will only affect APs when they re-associate to WLCs running the newer image.

To speed up the deployment of new code to APs, reboot the WLCs at the same time.

The APs will upgrade/downgrade based on what the controller image is. The image-data portion of AP joining.

Any vxworks based APs will not work with 5.x code (1000 series)

The controllers should be set to L3 lwapp prior to upgrades

[fromthesky]

Hi Eric,

sorry but I don't understand your answer very well. Why do I may not disable the ports? Since this upgrade will require three or four consecutive WLC upgrades, I would like to avoid the APs from upgrade each time. I would like to enable the distr ports just at the end of the WLC upgrade process in order to let the APs join the controller after the last WLC upgrade.

Thanks for your replay.

[Robert.N.Barrett_2 · Accepted solution]

Read the release notes carefully - I recall reading something that stated you should let the AP's upgrade to each version level as you upgrade the controller.

From the 5.2.157.0 release notes:

When you upgrade the controller to an intermediate software release, wait until all of the access points joined to the controller are upgraded to the intermediate release before you install the 5.2.157.0 software. In large networks, it can take some time to download the software on each access point.

[fromthesky]

Thanks Robert, I didn't noticed this sentence about intermediate ugrades when I read the release notes.

[Leo Laohoo]

Hi Matteo,

I've been in your situation before. Since you have a primary and secondary controller, here's what I've done:

1. Move all the AP's to join to the primary controller;

2. Upgrade the secondary controller with the firmware and the bootstrap;

3. When the secondary controller has been completely upgraded, move all the AP's to the secondary controller;

4. Upgrade the primary controller with the firmware and the bootstrap; and

5. Have the AP's associate to their rightful WLC.

Hope this helps.

[fromthesky]

Hi Leo,

thank you for your replay. I will consider your solution.