How to get more licenses for my "New" old ZD1200

[rasmus_hecter]

Hi.

I just bought a ZD1200. It was new, but i bought it over Ebay.

I have a  ZD 1000 and wanted to upgrade it with the ZD 1200 because i want to connect more than 25 Acces points.

On the old unit i have 25 licenses, but the new one (ZD1200) only has 5 by default???

So my question is.

1.How do i get more licenses?

2.Can i extract the 25 licenses from my old ZD 1000 and transfer them to the new ZD 1200?

[eizens_putnins · Accepted solution]

ZD1100 was sold with 6/12/25/50 AP versions, and license count could be upgraded only in such steps: 6 to 12 to 25 to 50.

ZD1200 is sold with 5 licenses and can be upgraded by 1 up to 75 and more (depending on firmware). You can buy necessary amount of licenses (with at least 1 year support to device itself and licenses) from any Ruckus reseller or on-line. 

  I would not use ZD1200 for network with more than 25 APs, of cause, much better to use vSZ instead.

About migrating licenses:

The short answer - you can't. ZoneDirector licenses are tied to device MAC and can't be moved to different device after activation (except ZD RMAs), but even than  they can be moved only to same platform.

The long answer is that in some cases you can negotiate with Ruckus special "migration" pricing, when you move from old ZD to vSZ. But it obviously will never apply to bought from EBAY ZD1200.  

So you can ether  live with 2 separate controllers (as ZD1100 is old, most probably you have APs which are not supported on latest ZD1200 firmware anyway), or you can migrate to vSZ, but it means some investments (licenses, support, virtualization infrastructure).

If you have small budget and EBAY is your  main source for equipment, you can  look for some ZD3000 with enough licenses (say, ZD3100 with 100 licenses). It is recently gone EOL, so it can be got cheap with enough licenses sometimes. If you are interested, contact me, I can provide some directions where to source  such device. Anyway, when running device without support, you are fixed to firmware you got on device, which means that you will be unable to connect future APs to this controller. In the same time all new APs provide Unleashed option exactly for customers with low budgets...

Hope it helps!

[rasmus_hecter]

@eizens_putnins Thanx for the reply.

[rasmus_hecter]

@eizens_putnins 

Can i connect both the zd 1000 and zd 1200 to the same switch and then in that way be able to connect more APs?

[eizens_putnins]

You can do it, but it may be a bit messy:

1. You need to configure each AP manually to which ZD to connect.

2. You must disable auto-approoval on both ZDs.

3. Both ZDs would show all APs as trying to join.

You can avoid controller competition for APs using different VLANs for AP management, even on the same switch (client VLANs may be the same).

Anyway, it will work. There will be no coordination between  APs on different Zds, of cause.