SZ-100 Hardware redundancy

[matthew_kopishk]

Hi Everyone,

I asked this question earlier but now I have some more details and need some guidance.

I have an SZ-100 (a SZ-104 to be exact).  I have not had good luck RMAing equipment recently with Ruckus, slow response, and slow shipping.  If our SZ-100 went down for some reason I simply can't wait a week plus for Ruckus to get me a new controller.

Our setup is very simple, a single cluster serving a small campus of 70 APs with 2 wireless lans.

My initial plan was to get another SZ-100 and do an active-active setup with the second controller being in another building.  I had an open case with a Ruckus Support Engineer for an unrelated issue and ran this plan by him and he said it would be easy to implement.

In the meantime, I went to source another SZ-100, and of course, they're NLA.  The vendor I was suggested an SZ-144 as that's what they had listed as replacing the SZ-100.  I OKed it, took a quick look at the specs, and noticed the SZ-144 had quite a bit more capacity but figured that couldn't hurt.  I did ask the Support Tech and he assured me that the 144 would work, I just couldn't mix SZs and vSZs.

That brings us to today, I was talking to another Ruckus Support Engineer (same unrelated issue as above but I think we resolved it this time) and mentioned my plan and he said I could NOT add my SZ-144 to my SZ-100 cluster in an active-active setup.  So now I'm sitting here with what looks like a very expensive paperweight.

I honestly wish I had pumped the brakes on the the SZ-144 as it was also a considerable price increase as well.  We were rushing to close out the budget year so things happen quickly.

What are my options?  I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place at the moment.

Thanks,

Matt

[david_black_594]

Missed your earlier post regarding the 1200 which touches on another major difference between ZD and SZ architectures.  In the case of a ZD managed network, if you only have one ZD and it goes down, the whole network is down until you get it back up.  You can add a standby ZD and enable SmartRedundancy which will allow you to recover, but it not a hitless failover.  All AP tunnels have to be estabilished to the surviving controller, and all wlan sessions are terminated and have to be re-established with the clients.  There's sort of a minute or two where things are messed up and afterwards everything is back to normal.  I think you said you had 70 APs and one ZD1200, so the partner should have sold you 65 licenses since the controller already includes 5 free ones, so a total of 70.  Add a second ZD1200 and enable smart redundancy and the licenses pool together - 70 from zd1 + 5 from zd2 = 75 total licenses on both controllers. 

Anyway, with ZD, the controller provided a lot or the services (control, management, mesh, dpsk, captive portal, keeping track of end user sessions, roaming etc...).  With SZ, the APs have grown up - they take care of themselves now.  There's still a few things that require the mother ship, but you're not using them. 

[matthew_kopishk]

@david_black_5940365 

Thanks for the clarification on the licenses.  That should make things really simple.  Up until 2020 I had only worked with ZD1200s so I'm quite familiar with their licensing.

As far as the ZD1200 I mentioned it is at a separate site unrelated to the one we've been talking about.  At some point, I would like to roll the APs that are on the ZD over to the SZ but I know that's a bit of a process on all ends (hardware, management, and licenses) and one that I'll tackle at a later date.

Thank you so much for your help,

Matt

[david_black_594]

@matthew_kopishke you're welcome to contact me if I can be of assistance.  We're a Ruckus Elite partner, but we're in Houston. So, you do need to follow Darrel's advice and get some qualified local help.  I can also help you with any technical or configuration questions, or a second opinion.  I think my email is listed on my profile.  If not, post a message here and I'll reply. 

[david_black_594]

@matthew_kopishke BTW, I meant to ask about the open network...  Does it have a traffic policy that denies access to the school's internal network (ie, is it internet only)? 

[matthew_kopishk]

@david_black_5940365 

Yes, it's a separate private network that we maintain for Student/Parent access on personal devices.  Zero access to our primary network.  We also use QoS to throttle the public network.